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TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 



OF THE 

/ 



/ 



ABBE FREDERICK EDWARD CHASSAY, 



Professor of Philosophy in the Seminary of Bayeux, Member of the Academy 
of the Catholic Religion at Rome, &c. &c. 



/^YOFCoivg^ 

NEW YOIjt 
M . T . CO Z^^F^M8Hm& 1 ^ 



556 Broadway. 
irDccotm, 



a 



Entered according to Act of Congress, intlie year 1853, by 
M. T. COZANS, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
Southern District of New York. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGK 

Approbation, V 

Note by the American Editor, 9 

Authors Preface, 13 

Introduction, 17 

Chapter I. — The Heart and Virtue, 31 

II— Melancholy, 62 

'* III. — Anarchy of the Heart, 93 

" IV. — Sensuality at the Tribunal of the Pass- 
ion?, 122 

" V. — Servitude and Liberty, 141 

" VI. — Sensuality in the family, 161 

VIL— The Family Eegenerated, 185 

VIII.— The Rationalistic Marriage, 201 

" IX. — Marriage and Liberty, 220 

" X. — Marriage and Love , 239 



APPROBATION 




I have read, with the greatest interest, this'V yk of the 
Abbe Chassay. This book, written with the perspicuity, 
elegance and energy which characterize the style of its 
learned author, appears to me, by irrefragable proofs, to de- 
monstrate, that true happiness can only be found in pure 
hearts, formed according to the precepts, and upon the laws 
of Christianity. 

May it be diffused among all classes of society, and pro- 
duce the happy effects intended by its pious author. 

f L. F., Bishop of Bayeux. 



■ 



NOTE BY THE 

AMERICAN EDITOR. 



The author of this elegant volume first became known 
to the American Editor by some of his brilliant essays in the 
Paris Annates de Philosophic Chretienne, and by his profound 
refutation of German and French Rationalism in a work 
entitled Christ et VEvangile. That so profound and gifted 
a writer should take in hand a series of volumes with the 
title of a Library of a Christian Woman, at first excited 
surprise. What attraction could the metaphysician, who 
had wrestled successfully with Strauss and his followers, 
find, for the style of writing, that usage has consecrated to 
the address of woman ? As soon as we open any of these 
volumes we ascertain the secret. M. Chassay is not a drea- 
my metaphysician, nor a man of merely theoretic study. 
He understands, he feels the wounds of modern society ; 
and the value of his philosophy is, that it appreciates at once 
the malady and the method of euro. How well he under- 



X. NOTE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 

stands the results of that sensual literature of George Sands 
and Eugene Sue, which has deluged France these years 
past! How accurately he tells what the results must be ! 
It is not a little remarkable that the first edition of this pre- 
sent volume was published in Paris on the morning of Feb- 
ruary 22nd, 1848, the very day of the revolution that drove 
Louis Philippe from the throne, and witnessed the downfall 
of the regime that sought to sustain good order in society 
without the aid of religion. 

The charm of M. Chassav's books is, that while they 
breathe throughout the severe and never changing principles 
of the doctrines of the Gospel, they are yet eminently books 
of our day. They discuss the principles of authors and of 
romances that are met with in every neighbourhood, and 
which, alas! find persons of unimpeached reputations to 
make their apologies, if not to advocate their perusal. 
This work of the Abbe Chassay's, as some one has said, is at 
once a triumphant vindication of christian morals against 
the literature of sensualism, and a volume of pious and ex- 
cellent meditations, not perhaps for girls, but for women of 
the world, and of society; and an instructive volume for 
men of study, for priests, for the learned, and also for young 
men who have been read in the literature of which it is so 
admirable a condemnation. " When I took up this book," 
wrote the illustrious Bishop Parisis, " 1 expected to find 
in it matter of pious edification, but I did not anticipate, at 



NOTE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. XI. 

the same time, such a volume of high philosophy, and of 
learned controversy, So charmed was I with it, that I read 
it almost through without laying it aside for a moment, and 
I wish it may be read by all thinking people, so great is the 
light it sheds on the most important and most attacked 
moral questions." 

The translation of this volume has been the work of a 
gifted lady, who will not permit her name to be mentioned 
in connection with it. The abridging and omitting some of 
the notes, and the incorporation of others of them into the 
body of the work, has been the ungrateful task of the edi- 
tor. But it was judged necessary to do so, in order not, too 
much, to break up the volume by the profusion of references. 

If this volume meets the acceptance with the public which 
it deserves, it will be followed up by translations of the 
succeeding works of the series : such as the Manual of 
a Christian Woman; Christian woman in her relations with 
the world ; Prejudices and distractions of the world ; Duties 
of "Women in Married Life ; Duties of Mothers from the 
Catholic point of view ; Martha and Mary, or the Education 

of Girls, tfec, &c. ' 

J. A. McM. 
Few York, Jan. 16, 1853 



THE ABBE CHASSAY'S 

PREFACE 

TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



No one appreciates more fully than we do, the books of 
devotion composed by the theologians of the last two cen- 
turies. Many of these works exhibit a solid science, an 
enlightened piety, and an ardent zeal for the salvation of 
souls. But it is equally incontestable that these books, (we 
speak of the greater number) written in a severe and exclu- 
sively theological style, are no longer in harmony with the 
intellectual requirements and literary habits of those who 
live in the midst of the world. Long since we formed the 
project of a library, which might present, clothed in the 
language of our own age, a collection of those truths which 
should conduct souls progressively, even to the sublime 
heights of evangelical perfection, — a perfection intended as 
the Saviour teaches for all christians, and for all conditions 
in life. 



XIV. PREFACE. 

The success of this work, of which the first edition ap- 
peared amid the convulsions of 1848, as well as the favor 
with which the Manual of a Christian Woman has since 
been received, proves that the religious public has appreci- 
ated the utility of the plan, the realization of which we 
have purposed, in accordance with the measures of our 
feeble powers. 

If we are able to execute our idea in its whole extent, we 
will, perhaps, publish, at some future period, books of devo- 
tion for the use of men of the world ; but as works of this 
kind, when addressed to all, do not necessarily suit any indi- 
vidual, on account of the generality of the counsels which 
they contain ; we design these first publications for christian 
women, who desire to preserve, notwithstanding the agi- 
tations of the age, the inestimable treasure of the virtues 
inculcated by the Gospel. 

Before tracing, in our Manual of a Christian Woman, a 
sketch of these virtues, we must first seek to dissipate the 
prejudices which now serve to alienate many minds from 
the doctrine of evangelical purity. We must discover 
whether woman can listen to those new apostles, who would 
teach her the worship of pleasure in place of the religion of 
devotion. As these ideas have already seduced many under- 
standings, thanks to romances, essays, and above all, to 
periodical literature. We have not thought it advisable to 
approach the study of the Gospel before having shown our 



PREFACE. XV. 

sisters that the teachings of the sacred book can alone pre- 
serve their moral dignity, and their true influence in the 
world ; that Christianity is not for them a law of slavery, 
but the true cause of their holiest virtues, and that they are 
indebted to it for the large share they have taken in the 
development of modern society. We must, in order to 
make them more freely understand the duties imposed upon 
them by the Gospel, attempt to dissipate the prejudices they 
may have acquired during their frequent relations with a 
world which has long ceased to recognize the word of our 
Saviour Jesus Christ, as the rule of its judgments. 

We have desired to show, to all sincere souls, the danger 
of those opinions which were formerly received with uni- 
versal indulgence — an indulgence which contained, in our 
opinion, the germ of frightful calamity. Our anticipations 
have been but too fully realized by events ; and this book, 
of which the basis was already written in 1844, and which 
was printed before the breaking out of the last revolution, 
has seemed prophetic, because of the menaces addressed by 
it to a society grown drowsy in the lap of ease and luxury. 
Now that the doctrine of pleasure attacks the family, relig- 
ion, property, in a word, all the basis of society, no longer 
in the secret of the clubs, but in the full blaze of day, illu- 
sons are henceforth impossible. Facts have proved the in- 
fallibility of that christian doctrine, which the sons of Vol- 
taire so often treated as folly, during the latter years of the 



XVI. PREFACE. 

reign of Louis Philippe. We shall no longer be accused of 
exaggeration, in having shown to those infatuated souls who 
were sleeping upon the brink of the abyss, the swords ready 
drawn, and the poignards glittering amid the gloom. 

We have suppressed none of these warnings, for, can we 
believe that society is sincerely converted, and that the 
harsh lessons of the two past years have been profitable to 
all the disciples of the religion of pleasure? But, as now, 
the wound is open, and bleeds visibly to all eyes. We have 
thought it advisable to suppress some of the proofs (1) and 
citations which paint, in too vivid a manner, perhaps, for 
some imaginations, the disorders we would condemn. We 
have, however, only made such retrenchments as were 
compatible with the nature and object of this work. 

Sommervieu, France, Nov. 19, 1849, 

Festival of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. 



INTRODUCTION. 



YE INCREDULOUS, THE MOST CREDULOUS. — (Pascal.) 



No one, in my opinion, should be astonished if 
our adversaries and ourselves arrive at cor elusions 
entirely contradictory, when the question concerns 
the conduct of life. We have, in fact, starting 
points so opposite that it is not surprising our re- 
sults should be completely different whenever we 
treat of morals or of social order. What is, in fact, 
the logical chain of ideas of those who contradict 
with the greatest apparent ingenuity the fundamen- 
tal doctrines of the Gospel ? 

The school of Voltaire, by ridiculing cleverly 
both, mind and heart, and understanding and love, 
had for ever driven far from it all sensitive and ge- 
nerous souls. (1) Rousseau, who understood so 
well the moral grandeur of Christianity, (2) was 
never willing to accept a derisory and mocking scep- 
ticism, which destroyed at once reason and sensi- 
bility. He did not, however, wish to receive that 

2 



XV111. INTRODUCTION. 

severe Christian morality which restrains so firmly 
all the impulses of the heart, and which aims at 
governing humanity through order and law. To 
break entirely with the doctrines of the Grospel, he 
was obliged to choose a totally different starting 
point. In studying even superficially the inclina- 
tions of man, Rousseau could not deny many disor- 
derly instincts; (3) but, by an illusion, which van- 
ishes in the presence of facts, he attributed all 
weaknesses and all frailties to the habits of a cor- 
rupting civilisation ; (4) nay, he even went so far as 
to say that human nature, freed from social preju- 
dices, was the universal rule of the beautiful, the 
true, and the good. (5) Thus, purify your soul 
from the evil influences that the world has planted 
therein ; seek no longer in the books of men a fluc- 
tuating and uncertain science ; look not towards the 
Heavens for the star which is to guide you in the 
path of life. Heaven is silent, and the Grod who, 
spurning the world with His foot, launched it into 
space, will never descend to speak with you. (6) 

However, do not permit yourself to despair, nor 
to be seduced by the vain sophisms of a discouraging 
philosophy ! Has not God given you an interior 
light, which may shine upon all the actions of life ? 
Have you not a heart, sensitive and strong ? Ah ! 
leave far behind the vain ideas of men, their narrow 



INTRODUCTION. XIX. 

prejudices, and their criminal compromises ! Re- 
turn to the feelings of human nature, so upright, so 
pure, and so fertile ! You will find in yourselves an 
inexhaustible source of greatness and love, which 
will fill your existence with energy and light. Man, 
such as society has made him, is only an incomplete 
and suffering being, who has been wrapped from his 
cradle in bands which stifle and depress him. The 
effort has been to suppress in him all the natural im- 
pulses capable of rendering him great and strong. 
He has been imprisoned in those bands of iron, 
called the position, compromises, and laws of so- 
ciety. Rapidly has he been transformed into a mean 
and miserable being, incapable of great sacrifices or 
of noble self-devotion. But man, such as he came 
from the hand of God, was never made for this base 
slavery. He has no cause to blush for his nature. 
He feels within himself an urgent necessity for lov- 
ing ; this necessity forms his happiness, and makes 
his life. He will love the soft azure of the skies, he 
will love the modest flowers of the field, he will 
love all nature, ere a stronger and more elevated 
love blooms within his heart. Let him grow up in 
this love and sympathy which are to fill his exist- 
ence ; here he will find patience, activity, compas- 
sion, perfect virtue. A heart which has not been 
stifled bears within it all the germs of the beautiful, 



XX. INTRODUCTION. 

all the seeds of the good. God, who made man for 
his own happiness, takes pleasure in seeing him de- 
velope himself, unfettered by human tyranny, full of 
love for nature and for humanity. Every law which 
would reduce him to a different mode of life is bad, 
because it is impossible. The law cannot accuse 
man of frailty and corruption, but it must reproach 
itself with having mistaken the requirements of hu- 
manity. (7) 

If in the theory of the Genevan philosopher 
there is something seducing for young minds, which 
are still governed by the senses and the imagination, 
it will never bear the reflection of a riper age, and 
it will always be shattered by a more serious exami- 
nation of human nature, considered in its profound 
misery, in its sad reality. To me it is very evident 
that the specious utopia which has been opposed to 
our Christian ideas is an entirely ideal system, com- 
pletely denuded of all historical or psychological 
basis, a veritable romance of the heart, as much as 
the Nouvelle Heloise or Clarissa Harlowe. The 
basis upon which it rests is in contradiction with the 
clearest and most positive facts of human nature. 

Human nature is certainly a great mystery ; how- 
ever, it is impossible to establish any point in morals 
"before having solved the formidable problem of the 
origin and destiny of man. The system of our ad- 



INTRODUCTION. 1XX. 

versaries rests upon an hypothesis so evidently de- 
bateable that it seems to us necessary before going 
further, to examine rapidly the fundamental axiom 
of their whole theory. The rationalists, disdaining 
facts and history, build their fantastic palaces in the 
air, vain dreams of an excitable imagination. But 
the City of God, which preserves eternally light and 
life, has laid its foundations upon the rock and upon 
the everlasting mountains. Catholic dogmas are 
connected with the universal convictions and with 
the most ancient and venerable traditions of the hu- 
man race. To break with Catholicity is to break 
with the most authentic history or the past. It is 
this which attaches to Catholic ideas all those minds 
that prefer good sense to systems, and positive facts 
to the vain speculations of a chimerical rationalism. 
The doctrine of the Church is an admirable tradi- 
tion, which commences with time and ends with 
eternity. 

These principles once well understood, no oae 
should be surprised that we make an immediate ap- 
peal to history, convinced, as we are, that the pre- 
tensions of our adversaries can never be sustained 
upon the fair field of facts. If then we invoke sci- 
ence in the question which is now before us, we 
shall find at the beginning of the religious traditions 
of all the most ancient nations, this opinion, namely, 

*2 



XXII. INTRODUCTION. 

that human nature, primitively pure and holy, by a 
fatal revolt against the Author of life, fell from its 
first greatness, and received a deep wound. (8) 
Voltaire himself, so seldom in harmony with our 
opinions, could not avoid saying that " Original sin 
is the foundation of the theology of all nations. "(9) 
Kant makes the same avowal: "Men," says he, 
" have asserted with a common consent that the 
world commenced with good, but that the fall into 
evil soon became manifest." (10^ 

The limits of this introduction will not permit me 
to cite universal traditions in proof of the primeval 
fall. I have accomplished that work elsewhere in 
its whole extent. I will here confine myself simply 
to a few fundamental reflections, in order to render 
clear the rigorous logic of Christian ideas in their 
relations to the subject which now occupies us. 

If man be essentially pure and good, as some have 
dreamed, whence comes it that the human race, es- 
pecially considered in its early history, sees only in 
him a criminal stricken by Divine justice ? Is not 
humanity for the whole world that mysterious Pro- 
metheus, chained to the rock by justice and power 
for having attempted to steal fire from Heaven? 
Does not all mankind unite in believing that human 
nature, to use Cicero's admirable expression, is but 
a soul in ruins ? 



INTRODUCTION. XX111. 

The most ancient histories represent, under grace- 
ful and poetical emblems, a certain period truly 
happy, when the heart of man had not yet felt the 
influence of evil, when his spirit retained without 
difficulty celestial truths. But, say the primitive 
historians, on one eventful day the golden chain that 
bound earth to Heaven was fatally broken, and hu- 
man nature fell into all its depths of misery. One 
must be singularly inattentive not to perceive the 
persevering care with which humanity has preserved 
this tradition, so expressive of the first degradation. 
Whence are these strange rites, destined to purify 
the marriage union, which should seem rather to 
suggest ideas less dark and severe ? Why is the 
birth of the child accompanied by ceremonies, which 
so well express the energetic desire of expiation, 
which tormented all the ancient people ? In Rome, 
in Mexico, in Egypt, in Thibet, in Persia, in India, 
in Greece, in the Canaries, have we not seen the 
new-born purified by a mysterious water, and even 
sometimes by fire, to efface the stain of his birth? 
I am no longer surprised that Yirgil places at the 
entrance to the kingdoms of sorrow, children har- 
vested at the breast, before they have tasted of life. 

Another practice not less universal, perhaps not 
less strange, again expresses the conviction held by 
the human race of its fall, and of its profound 



XXIV. INTRODUCTION. 

misery. Turn your eyes in every direction, and you 
will find the thought of appeasing a Heaven believed 
to be angry, and the practice of sacrifice as widely 
spread as the belief in a God. Who then are you, 
ye men of these latter ages, who tell us of those in- 
nate virtues which the sons of Adam never recog- 
nised as privileges granted to them ? Five or six 
centuries before all philosophy, David exclaimed : 
" For behold I was conceived in iniquities, and in 
sins did my mother conceive me." Several centu- 
ries before David, Job said, when addressing him- 
self to God: "Who can make him clean that is 
conceived of unclean seed r" 

It is easy to perceive how strong is the chain which 
binds together all the dogmatic and historical ideas 
presented by the human race. Man believes him- 
self stricken by the hand of Heaven ; he inscribes 
this doo-ma at the head of all theologies ; he recalls 

C O 7 

it in a thousand solemn circumstances, at the birth 
of- children, at the marriage of the betrothed, and 
when offering sacrifice to his divinities ; but what 
completes on this point the proof of the absolute 
identity of universal tradition with our Christian 
convictions, is that all these regrets, all these expia- 
tions tend to some vast hope, which increases day 
by day. According to the Pythagorean Philolaus, 
all the ancient theologians and poets stated that the 



INTRODUCTION. XXV. 

soul was buried in the body as in a tomb, for the 
punishment for some sin. (11) He might have 
added that, from the depths of this tomb men raised 
their hands to Heaven, and sighed after the Desired 
of the Nations ; after Him, who alone could kindle 
in them the true light and stainless purity. (12) 

I ask you, can any serious reason be found for re- 
jecting the ancient belief of the human race with 
regard to our origin and our nature ? I cannot find 
that truly scientific labors furnish the least objection 
against the doctrine of which we now speak, which 
can long detain us. On the contrary, it appears to 
me that the more recent inquiries into the religions 
and worship of the East, have placed the universality 
of the convictions of the nations in a still stronger 
light. If, on the other hand, we consider the ques- 
tion from the point of view of experimental philo- 
sophy, psychological labors will singularly support 
the opinions which tradition imposes upon us. Let 
us hear upon this subject the most profound think- 
ers : — 

" Who does not know, says St. Augustin, in what 
ignorance of the truth, as is plainly shown in chil- 
dren, and with how many bad passions, which make 
their appearance even in infancy, as from a germ 
which all the sons of Adam bear within them from 
their birth, man comes into the world ; so that, were 



XXVI. INTRODUCTION. 

he permitted to live according to his own fancy, there 
is scarcely an excess of which he would not be guilty. 
Law and instruction keep watch against the dark- 
ness and inordinate desires in which we are born. 
But that cannot be effected without much pain and 
grief. Wherefore, I ask you, the threats made to 
children to keep them in the path of duty ? Where- 
fore the masters, the governors, the rods, the scourges 
which must so often be employed in the education of 
a beloved child, lest he should become incorrigible 
and ungovernable ? Wherefore all these sufferings, 
if not to conquer ignorance, and to repress lust, two 
evils which accompany us at our entrance into the 
world ? Whence comes the difficulty of remember- 
ing anything, and the ease with which it is again for- 
gotten? The labor requisite to acquire knowledge, 
and the facility of ignorance. Why is diligence so- 
painful, and si >th so easy ? Does not all this clearly 
show the real tendency of nature, and the assistance 
she requires to aid her in her weakness ?" (13) 

" Ye are deceived, ye sages of our age! exclaims 
Bossuet ; man is not the delight of nature, since she 
outrages him in so many ways ; neither can he be 
her outcast, since he has within him that which is 
of more value than nature herself. Whence comes 
then so strange a disproportion ? and why do we 
find the parts so disconnected ? Must it be told ? 



INTRODUCTION. XXV11. 

Do not these disjointed fragments, with their mag- 
nificent foundations, plainly speak of a creation in 
ruins ? Contemplate this edifice, you will behold 
the traces of a Divine hand ; but the inequality of 
the work will soon convince you of the share that 
sin has therein taken ? My Grod ! what is this med- 
ley ? I scarcely recognise myself. Is this the man 
made in the image of God, the miracle of His wis- 
dom, and the masterpiece of His workmanship ? It 
is he, doubt it not. Whence then this discordance ? 
It arises from the desire of man to build, according 
to his own ideas, upon the foundation of his Creator, 
and his having swerved from the original plan. 
Thus, contrary to the regularity of the first design, 
the immortal and the corruptible, the spiritual and 
the carnal, in a word, the angel and the animal, are 
found at once united. Behold the solution of the 
enigma, the explanation of the difficulty : Faith re- 
stores us to ourselves, and our shameful deficiencies 
can no longer hide from us our natural dignity. "(14) 
This great Bishop says elsewhere, with admirable 
energy, in speaking of human nature : — " It is like 
the remains of an edifice, once regular and harmo- 
nious, now overthrown and lying upon the ground, 
but which still retains some vestiges of its ancient 
grandeur and of the science of its Architect." (15) 
u In this abyss, says Pascal, does the Gordian 



xxvm. 



INTRODUCTION. 



knot of our condition find its twistings and turnings • 
eo that man is more incomprehensible without this 
mystery, than is this mystery incomprehensible to 
man." 

Now that we have surveyed our adversaries' start- 
ing point, it remains for us to judge of their theory 
in its application to the requirements of the Indi- 
vidual, of the Family, and of Society. 




NOTES AND PROOFS OF THE INTRODUCTION. 



1 Romain Cornut, Essay on Voltaire. Andre, De- 
velopment of Voltarianism, in the Annales de Philoso- 
pliie Chretienne, 3d series, 17. 

2 J. J. Rousseau, Oeuvres completes, Desoer's edi- 
tion, V., 494, X., 211, IX., 124 and 130, XVIII., 559, 
and above all IV., 83, IX., 115. 

3 J. J. Rousseau, Oeuvres completes, VIII., 423, 
XVIIL, 45. 

4 J. J. Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Inequality. 

5 " The books of men are false, says he ; but <ature 
never lies." We have shewn, in the first part of" L&rist 
and the Gospel," to what lengths this principle had car- 
ried the Stoics. 

6 J. J. Rousseau, Emile and Letters from the Moun- 
tain. For the refutation, see Hooke, Strictures on 
Emile. Bergier, Deism refuted. 

7 The opinions we have just cited will not be found 
in Ertiile. Emile is a book of official philosophy. We 
have sought, in the Confessions, the real views and true 
opinions of the Genevan Philosopher. Did he not him- 
self write at the beginning of this book, Intus et in 
cute'* 

8 We have established this fact by abundant proofs, 
in a review, when treating, in its whole extent, the 
question of the Primeval Fall. Universite Catholique, 
2d series, V. We refer our readers to it. 



NOTES AND PROOFS OP* THE INTRODUCTION. XXX. 

9 Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs, III., 295, edition of 
1756. 

10 Kant, of Religion within the limits of reason. 

11 We have given no references for the greater part 
of the facts we have cited. They will be found in our 
articles on the Primeval Fall. 

12 We have elsewhere established the universal 
expectation of the Redeemer. Le Christ et TEvangile, 
2d part, I vol. 

13 St. Augustine, City of God. 

14 Bossuet, Sermon on Death. 

15 Bossuet, First Sermon for Pentecost. It is some- 
what curious that the materialist Broussais has arrived 
at the same results by psychological observations. 
Broussais, De 1 irritation et de la folie, 100. Every one 
is acquainted with the beautiful pages of M. de Lame- 
nais on this question. De Lamenais, Essai sur lindif- 
ference. 




THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER, 



CHAPTER I. 



THE HEART AND VIRTUE. 



He who renounces self-control, devotes himself, like a madman, to 
the gravest misfortunes. — (^Madame de Stael.) 



An impartial observer, who wishes to understand 
the whole of human nature, cannot base upon that 
shifting sand the law of duty and of imperishable 
truth. The ideas of the Gospel, full of sublime 
elevation, are the only true explanation of the great 
mystery of man. If I comprehend well the doe- 
trine of the Saviour, there are, in our life, two 
powers and two laws. These two laws are expres- 
sed, with remarkable energy, by the profound anti- 
thesis of the flesh, and the spirit. Jesus Christ, 
when addressing Peter, who had confessed his divi- 
nity, said to him : " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar- 
Jona : because flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
to thee, but my Father who is in Heaven." — St. 
Matt., xvi, 17. In the garden of olives, He awa- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 32 

kens His disciples to say to them these last and so- 
lemn words : " Watch ye, and pray that ye enter 
not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, 
but the flesh is weak." — Ibid, xxvi, 41. In St. 
John, they are called sons of God who are born, not 
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh. — St. John, 
i, 12, 13. Jesus Christ says to the Pharisees whom 
He condemns : " You judge according to the flesh." 
— St. John, viii, 15. The Apostles have faith- 
fully reproduced this doctrine. The great Apostle 
wrote to the Romans : " We know that the law is 
spiritual but I am carnal." — Horn., vii, 14. In 
addressing the Corinthians, and speaking of the time 
when they were not truly Christians, he says to 
them : " And I, brethren, could not speak to you as 
unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. As unto little 
ones in Christ." — 1 Cor., iii, 1. Afterwards he 
adds: "For, whereas there is among you envying 
and contention, are you not carnal, and weak accord- 
ing to man ?" — Ibid, iii, 3. He contrasts the wis- 
dom of the flesh with the grace of God. — 2 Cor., 
i, 12. "I myself, with the mind,^serve the law of 
God ; but with the flesh, the law of sin." — Rom., 
vii, 25. " There is now therefore no condemnation 
to them that are in Jesus Christ, who walk not ac- 
cording to the flesh." — Rom., viii, 1. "We walk 
not according to the flesh, but according to the 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 33 

spirit ; for they that are according to the flesh, mind 
the things that are of the flesh ; but they that are 
according to the spirit, mind the things that are of 
the spirit. For the wisdom of the flesh is death ; 
but the wisdom of the spirit is life and peace. Be- 
cause the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God ; 
for it is not subject to the law of* God, neither can 
it be. And they who are in the flesh, cannot please 
God. But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, 
if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. There- 
fore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to 
live according to the flesh. For if you live accord- 
ing to the flesh, you shall die ; but if by the spirit, 
you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live." — 
Rom., viii, 1-14. " Flesh and blood cannot possess 
the kingdom of God : neither shall corruption pos- 
sess incorruption." — 1 Cor., xv, 50. " For though 
we walk according to the flesh, we do not war ac- 
cording to the flesh." — 2 Cor., x, 3. "I conde- 
scended not to flesh and blood." — Gal., 1, 16. 
" Walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfil the 
lusts of the flesh."— Ibid, v, 16. "For the flesh 
lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the 
flesh."— Ibid, 17. "Now the works of the flesh 
are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, im- 
modesty, luxury." — Ibid, 19. "And they that are 
Christ's, have crucified their flesh, with the vices 






THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 34 

and concupisences."— Ibid, 24. "For what things 
a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he 
that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall he 
reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, 
of the spirit shall reap life everlasting." — Ibid, vi, 
8. St. Peter says : " He reserves the unjust unto 
the day of judgment to be tormented. And espe- 
cially them who walk after the flesh in the lust of 
umcleanness."— 2 Peter, ii, 9, 10. " Dearly belo- 
ved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to re- 
frain yourselves from fleshly desires which war 
against the soul."— 1 Peter, ii, 11. St. Jude says 
to the Christians : " Hating also the spotted garment 
which is fleshly." — St. Jude, 23. 

The heart, when it is delivered over to the laws 
of instinct unregenerated, becomes, so to speak, the 
centre and the organ of that vivid and strong carnal 
power, which combats ever against the spirit. 
u From the heart," says Christ, " come forth 
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, 
thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies."— St. Matt. 
xv, 19. Bourdaloue also, speaks of the rebellion of 
the heart. — (Bourdaloue, Sermon on the Purifica- 
tion of the Virgin.) J. J. Kousseau himself, wrote 
to the physician Tronchin, the following words, 
which overthrow his whole sentimental system, and 
which seem a commentary on the text from the Gos- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 35 

pel : " There is no man, who would not soon, by 
following the impulses of his heart, become the 
worst of sinners." But the grace of Grod, which 
rectifies the intellect of man, can also reform the 
unregulated emotions of the heart. Bossuet ex- 
plains this with his usual profundity : " When the 
propensity of covetousness rules in the soul, it be- 
comes the captive of the corruptible, and conse- 
quently criminal. But Grod, to prevent this disor- 
der, breathes into the hearts of His true children, 
chastity and the delight in the eternal, which may 
deliver them from slavery, and make them love Grod 
above all things. Let us hear the promise which 
He made to the heirs of the New Testament : ' I 
will write,' said He, 'my law in their hearts.' 
What is it, to write the law in our hearts, if not to 
make us love the justice which shines so magnifi- 
cently in the law ; and to make us love it with so 
powerful an affection, that, notwithstanding all the 
obstacles of the world, it may be the rule of our 
life." — (Bossuet, Refutation of the Catechism of 
Ferry, Ch x.) 

The regenerated spirit, on the contrary, is the 
seat of light and life. Therein is born and developed 
the superior existence,' in opposition to that life, 
entirely mechanical and sensual, which resists 
its strivings. If man be twofold in his nature, he 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 36 

should develop in himself, by the struggle, the ele- 
ments of the beautiful, the holy, and the just. To 
live according to the flesh is, to quote the Apostle, 
to die. To rule the flesh by the spirit, and to hold 
it in subjection, is, to live. These are the very 
words of the great Apostle, quoted by us a little 
ago. Bourdaloue thus comments upon the doctrine 
of St. Paul : " Mortification of the passions, the 
means of maintaining us in innocence, and the ne- 
cessary means. For it is impossible to preserve in- 
nocence in a heart, while the passions there hold 
sway. As their source is poisoned, and their origin 
is in that miserable concupiscence which bears us 
towards external objects, and whose sole end is to 
be satisfied at whatsoever price, so, if we listen to 
them and follow their suggestions, they force us in 
a thousand ways to break the law of Grod, and pre- 
cipitate us into every kind of sin." After having 
thus established the necessity of interior mortifica- 
tion in order to preserve purity, the admirable theo- 
logian shows, with the same force of logic, the rigo- 
rous obligation of exterior penance. "I know," 
says he, " that heresy, with her pretended reforms, 
cannot abide these exterior practices, and that, 
having destroyed pcuiaace in its most essential parts, 
by taking from it afession, and even contrition for 
sin, or at least ,y not admitting them as necessary, 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 37 

she has found means still farther to lighten it, by 
rejecting, as useless, works of satisfaction, by abo- 
lishing the precept of fasting, and by considering as 
weakness and folly, all the austerities of the saints : 
but it is enough that the enemies of the Church 
have thus decided, to determine us against following 
the dangerous attraction of a doctrine, so fitted to 
seduce and corrupt souls. No, Christians, in what- 
ever manner we view it, there is no true penance 
without the mortification of the body ; and so long 
as our bodies, after sin, remain unpunished, so long- 
as they do not suffer the chastisement which a holy 
zeal for avenging God obliges us to impose upon 
them, so long will our hearts be not entirely con- 
verted, and God will not deem Himself fully satis- 
fied. Since the Saviour of the world has done pe- 
nance for us at the expense of His adorable flesh, it 
is impossible, says St. Augustin, that we ourselves 
should do otherwise ; we must accomplish in our 
flesh that which, by an admirable secret of the wis- 
dom of God, is wanting of the satisfactions and suf- 
ferings of our Divine Mediator. Since sin reigns in 
our flesh, as St. Paul says, in our flesh must also 
reign penance, for penance must ^ule wherever sin 
has dominion^ Our bodies, by an unfortunate con- 
tagion, and by the close union they have with our 
souls, become the accomplices of sin, are often its 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 38 

source and origin, so that the same Apostle does not 
fear to call them, bodies of sin : corpus peccati ! as if 
sin were in fact incorporated in us, and our bodies 
were themselves sinful substances ; an expression 
which the Maaicheans formerly abused, but which 
in the orthodox sense, signifies nothing more than 
bodies subject to sin, bodies inhabited by sin. Our 
bodies, I say, partake in the sin ; it is then just they 
should participate in the expiation and reparation 
for sin, which should be made by penance. Although 
the virtue and merit of penance are in the will, the 
exercise and practice of penance should consist, in 
part, in the mortification of the body ; and whoso 
reasons otherwise, is in error, and has wandered 
from the truth." — (Bourdaloue, Pensees, Mortifi- 
cation of the Senses ; and Care?ne, Sermon on the 
Ceremony of the Ashes.) 

The regenerated spirit represents here below 
divine liberty and divine intelligence ; its sphere 
is that of sublimity and light. The flesh is, 
on the other hand, the gloomy region where desires 
without restraint, consuming cupidities, and insatia- 
ble passions, rage with savage impetuosity. " Thus," 
said Bossuet, "I exhort you, my brethren, in the 
words of the holy Apostle, that you should put off 
the carnal man. Free yourselves from the earthly 
man who has only corrupt desires ; declare yom> 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 39 

selves, by a just sentence, descended from Heaven, 
and made for Heaven, by rejecting the corporal af- 
fections which attach you to earth. ' Go out from 
among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, 
and touch not the unclean thing : and I will receive 
you.'" — (Bossuet, Sermon on Virginity — on the 
occasion of a profession.) In this mysterious anti- 
thesis of spirit and flesh, the practical morality of 
Christianity is admirably personified. 

It is impossible not to recognise, as soon as we 
reflect, the great superiority that such a system pos- 
sesses, in explaining the facts of man, and the facts 
of history, the world of the soul, and the world of 
humanity. It is only necessary to study our own 
nature, with attention, to perceive within, these two 
laws, always struggling, always contending : the law 
of the flesh and the law of the spirit. Turn your 
eyes towards a certain side of human nature, behold 
what narrow egotism, what foolish pride, what co- 
vetousness! See what abject affections, what anti- 
pathy to order and virtue, what horror of law. You 
are not man, if you do not hear the tempest of pas- 
sion howling in the depths of your heart, and feel 
every instant, unquiet thoughts, agitating desires, 
and stormy rebellion, like venomous plants, spring- 
ing into being. Listen to the eloquent lamentations 
of the Apostle writing to the Romans : " For that 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 40 

which I work, I understand not. For I do not that 
good which I will ; but the evil which I hate, that I 
do. If then I do that which I will not, I consent 
to the law, that it is good. Now then it is no more 
I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I 
know that there dwelleth not in me, that is to say, 
in my flesh, that which is good. For to will, is pre- 
sent with me ; but to accomplish that which is good, 
I find not. For the good which I will, I do not ; 
but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I 
do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it, 
but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that 
when I have a will to do good, evil is present with 
me. For I am delighted with the law of Glod, ac- 
cording to the inward man : But I see another law 
in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, 
and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my 
members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall de- 
liver me from the body of this death ? The grace 
of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I 
myself, with the mind, serve the law of Grod ; but 
with the flesh, the law of sin." — St. Paul, Romans, 
vii, 15-25. 

Bourdaloue again comments admirably on the 
doctrine of St. Paul : " Since we were conceived 
in sin, we truly know ourselves subject to the disor- 
ders produced by it, and which are its sad effects ; 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 



41 



that is to say, we know that this first sin has drawn 
upon us a deluge of evils, and that, through the two 
mortal wounds made by it, ignorance and concupis- 
cence, it has infused the venom of its malignity into 
all the powers of our souls ; thence is there nothing 
sound within us ; thence are our minds capable of 
the grossest errors ; our wills are delivered to the 
most shameful passions ; our imagination is the seat 
and the source of illusion ; and our senses are the 
gates and the organs of incontinence ; thence are 
we born filled with frailties, subject to the incon- 
stancy and the vanity of our thoughts, slaves to our 
temperaments and caprices, and governed by our 
own desires. We are not ignorant that from this 
cause arises the difficulty of doing good, the tendency 
and inclination to evil, the repugnance to our duties, 
the disposition to throw off the yoke of our most 
legitimate obligations, the hatred of all truth which 
might correct and reform us, the love of flattery 
which deceives and corrupts, the aversion to virtue, 
and the poisoned charm of vice ; thence is this in- 
ternal war, of which we are conscious, this secret 
rebellion of our very reason against Grod, this strange 
obstinacy in desiring always what the law forbids, 
because the law forbids it ; in not desiring what it 
commands, because the law commands it ; in loving, 
through self-will, what is frequently in itself unlova- 

3 



42 THE TOI/CHSTONE OF CHARACTER*. 

blc, and in rejecting obstinately, that which we are 
commanded to love, and which merits our affec- 
tions." — (Bourdaloue, The Mysteries, Sermon on 
the Conception of the Virgin.) 

There is man as he is, but you see not there 
the whole of man. There he is in his degra- 
dation, in all his misery : but this miserable 
being that one is tempted to trample under foot, is 
not without greatness and nobility. " Is man," 
says Bossuet, " man, whom God has made in His 
own image, only a shadow? That which Jesus 
Christ came from Heaven to seek on earth, that 
which He has thought it possible, without self- 
debasement, to redeem, at the price of His own 
blood, can it be a mere nothing ? Let us confess 
our error. Entire self- contempt must not be per- 
mitted to man, lest, believing with the impious that 
his life is but a game wherein chance rules, he 
should be tempted to live according to the will of 
his blind desires, without law and without guidance." 
— (Bossuet, Funeral Oration on Henrietta of Eng- 
land.) True, man is this creeping earth-worm ; 
yet is he capable of comprehending virtue, of che- 
rishing order, of seeking self-sacrifice, of raising 
himself above the skies. Is it not a gigantic ruin^ 
which retains in the midst of its crumbling walls 
some isolated tower ? Is it not the Palm, springing 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 43 

from the bosom of the arid desert ? Is it not the 
butterfly, starting from the dust, to sport in the sun- 
light its sparkling and radiant wings ? Behold the 
mystery of the heart, which philosophy either can- 
not, or will not comprehend ; the prodigy of the 
duality of human nature, without which, both hu- 
manity and history must remain unintelligible. Do 
you not see the same tendency continually reprodu- 
ced in the exterior life of nations ? Do you not see 
everywhere, some men governed by the law of the 
spirit, and others, intoxicated by the heart, and mis 
led by the senses ? 

Man is constantly solicited by these two rival 
powers, which speak from the depths of his being : 
the spirit and the flesh. In all ages, generous and 
magnanimous souls have listened with avidity to the 

y Jaw of duty, and, with noble ardor, have tri- 
umphed over the petty weaknesses of the heart. 
Those souls, great in the eyes of the age in which 
they lived, are yet more honored in the memory of 
posterity. The sacrifice, made by them, of the 
fleeting pleasures of life, renders their remembrance 
precious to all good men. Their names are to us as 
the names of our friends ; their glory is as dear to 
us as our own ; their memory encourages and still 
sustains us. Ah ! no, it was not by obeying the un- 
regulated impulses of the heart, that they found the 



44 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHAKA TER. 

true path to the respect and love of all ! Contem- 
plate, on the other hand, in the arena called history, 
the debased slaves of flesh and blood. We are dis- 
mayed by the profound degradation into which so 
many superior minds have fallen, who sought plea- 
sure, rather than duty : the recollection of their 
disorders still terrifies the imagination. We may 
see, even among the noblest minds of antiquity, to 
what excesses the consecration of the natural in- 
stincts led. We can say but little here. As this 
book is addressed to several classes of readers, we 
are obliged to restrain ourselves within narrow limits. 
We confine ourselves then, to the repetition of what 
we have already said in the first part of Christ et 
PEvamgih : "If the sage of the stoics, when the 
question is of the spiritual direction of his life, must 
constantly raise himself above the prejudices which 
govern the vulgar, what rule should he adopt, who 
is not incommoded by doubtful convictions ?" It is 
well known that the eloquent author of Emile, in 
order to brand the corrupt society of the eighteenth 
century, all the passions of which were however 
shared by him, deemed it necessary to vaunt to his 
contemporaries the pure and gentle life led in the 
depths of the forests, far from the tumults and in- 
trigues of turbulent cities. This is only the idea 
of Antisthenes, renewed by the school of the Por- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 45 

tico, and disguised under rhetorical forms- To re- 
duce man to the instincts of a nature imagined 
always essentially upright, and inclined to good, was 
the leading idea of the successors of Zeno. The 
sage, in his haughty and savage independence, be- 
lieved himself obliged by duty, by conscience, and 
by the obedience due to the imperious voice which 
spoke within his soul, to approach as nearly as pos- 
sible to the animal instincts. Let no. one think this 
expression in the least degree exaggerated. Should 
any one doubt it, let him, instead of listening to us, 
hearken to the historians of philosophy : "After the 
example of Aristotle, says Bitter, they consider all 
virtue as founded on instinct. The instinct of man 
differs from that of animals, in that it ought to de- 
velop itself in conformity with reason. It is in 
order to accomplish the precept of living in confor- 
mity with nature, that they recommend the cynical 
mode of life, and present the animal as a model to 
man." — (Ritter, History of Ancient Philosophy, 
Vol. III.*) 

* "This morality, says M. J. Simon, even were it 
sanctioned and legitimated, and its principles intelligi- 
ble, is impossible in practice, and false in its require- 
ments." — (J. Simon, " Manuel de Philosophic ") See 
also the article " Epictetus," in the " Dictionnaire des 
Sciences Philosophiques." — "Live in conformity with 
nature ! Universal nature, was intended by Clea'nthes ; 

3* 



46 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

St. Paul, in his eloquent Epistle to the Romans, 
has traced so living a picture of pagan licentious- 
ness, that we may see he had still under his eyes 
the afflicting spectacle of the greatest heart-misery 
which, perhaps, the world has ever known. Speak- 
ing of the philosophers, he describes their morals 
as follows : " Wherefore G-od gave them up to the 
desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonor 
their own bodies among themselves Who changed 
the truth of G-od into a lie ; and worshipped and 
served the creature rather than the Creator, who is 



human nature, abstracted from universal nature, by 

Chrysippus The principle remains the same, bat 

the sense is more precise, and the interpretation less 
dangerous. However it was in the interpretation of 
this very precept, that this vigorous mind was self- 
deceived, and was led into an extravagant cynicism. 
In Chrysippus, may be found a justification of incest, 
an exhortation to teed on- human bodies, an apology for 
prostitution, &c Consider the animals, said the bold 
logician, and you will find by their example, that none 
of these things are immoral, or contrary to nature." — 
(Hem-ne, article " Chrysipptis." in the '• Dictionnaire 
dps Sciences Philosophiqu.es ") lt Stoicism, says again 
Bitter, permits almost everything to the wise man, pro- 
vided neither pleasure nor interest be the incitements 
to action. Not to mention their defi-nee of interested 
lyino 1 , of suicide, of prostitution,- their contempt for hu- 
rial, and many other similar things, tiiey permit, to the 
sa^e, actions which revolt nature and which, it is 
scarcely allowable to name : they do not think the use 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 47 

blessed forever. — Amen. For this cause G-od de- 
livered them up to shameful affections." — St. Paul, 
Rom. i, 24, 25, 26. I have designedly abridged 
the quotation, in order to spare the youth of some 
of my readers the inflexible severity of the Apos- 
tle's words. 

Perhaps it will be said that St. Paul has calum- 
niated the pagan philosophers. Alas ! all the monu- 
ments of antiquity attest the profound degradation 
of the most eminent men of the Greco-Roman 
society. According to the infidel Gribbon, the least 
immoral of the first fifteen Roman emperors was 



of human flesh, as food, against nature, and unions 
such as that of CEdipus and Jocasta are in their eyes 
entirely indifferent. 1 ' I have abridged Ritter, notwith- 
standing his already prudent reserve. Curious details 
may be found on the taste of the stoics for drunkenness, 
in Diogenes Lsertius, " De vitis Philosophorum," lib. 
VII, <j 26 and 84; in Plutarch, " Life of Cato of Utica ;» 
in Seneca, last chapter of the "Treatise on Tranquillity 
of Soul." As to the infamous vices of Zeno. of Chry- 
sippus, and of Clean thes, see Sextus Empiricus, and 
Diogenes Laertius, book VII, \ 18. On the doctrine of 
incest, consult Sextus Empiricus, Lsertius, and the 
refutation of the stoics by Plutarch. They collect 
on this point the opinions of Chrysippus. For the 
ideas of Zeno and Chrysippus on community of wives, 
see Diogenes Laertiiis, hook VII, § 131. It is useless to 
speak of the pride of the stoics. This point is suffi- 
ciently well known. (See Stanley, u History of ihilo- 
sophv.' 739-741.) 



43 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Claudius, who lived in incest. The unexpurgated 
works of Virgil, of Titullus, and of Horace, would 
cause the least scrupulous member of Christian so- 
ciety to blush. Cicero, the gentleman of paganism, — 
Cicero, Pontiff, Consul, Father of his Country, 
makes revelations to Cotta on the morals of the 
philosophers, much more overwhelming than those 
of St. Paul. — (De nat. Deor., 1. 28.) Seneca is 
neither less clear, nor less alarming. — (Epistola 
XCV.) Lucian, the irreconcilable enemy of the 
Christians, crushes under bitter epigrams the same 
philosophers whose morality St. Paul has decried. — 
(Amoves.) I will not cite Salvian, because he may 
be accused of Christian prejudices. — (De guberna 
tione Dei, lib. VII. ) 

What a miracle then is Christianity, which has 
drawn the world from so profound a gulf of misery 
and infamy ; and how frightful was the condition of 
those sublime spirits, who often knew the truth, but 
who held her captive rather than abandon their sin- 
ful propensities ! How fully does this melancholy 
history convince us of the profound degradation of 
a heart which would rather stifle than serve truth, 
that immortal daughter of the . Most High ! In- 
deed, we should soon see all the excesses of anti- 
quity reappear among us, if a hypocritical and per- 
verted morality, legitimating all the inclinations of 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 49 

the heart, were to throw the reins to those unruly 
passions, which are as yet, fortunately for the hap- 
piness of the world, restrained by Christian modesty. 
Consider, in fact, what is passing around us. In 
his Confessions, as well as in the Heloise, Jean- 
Jaques Rousseau attempted to obtain a kind of tole- 
ration for the excesses of the heart. He represented 
his heroes and himself as fatally conquered by the 
concurrence of circumstances; he spoke with so 
much enthusiasm of those sacred impulses, before 
which all should bow, that apparently there was but 
little more to be said in order completely to reas- 
sure all consciences, and to lull them peacefully to 
sleep on the downy pillow of the passions. Alas ! 
would to Heaven, for the sake of virtue and truth, 
that these fatal germs had not fallen on so fertile a 
soil. The defence of the passions was to find among 
us, after Rousseau, more than one popular advocate. 
" The theory of the liberty of the passions, neces- 
sarily led Fourier and his school to consequences, 
of which the singularity is the least defect. Obliged 
not only to authorise the inconstancy of tastes and 
affections, but to legitimate this malady of the soul, 
which is one of the notes of his social scale, he 
preaches it in its effects the most shocking to human 
dignity. The family not being the basis of the so- 
ciety which he desires to establish, we may readily 



50 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

conceive that marriage is, in his eyes, neither a reli- 
gious bond, nor even a civil contract ; but he autho- 
rises a liberty in the relations of men and women, 
which wounds the deep sentiments in which these 
relations have their origin. He justifies infidelities 
in unions formed upon the faith of mutual promises, 
thus destroying the agreement of word with act. 
Besides, this agreement could not exist, since beings 
who obey their passions are not their own masters, 
and consequently cannot dispose of themselves. 
Our pen refuses to analyse the solutions of Fourier- 
ism in all that has reference to these relations ; we 
must be content to say, that this delicate portion of 
social existence is treated with a cynicism, which 
revolts not only Christian morality, but even natural 
modesty." — (De Lourdoueix, Le Fourierism devant 
le Siecle, § 5, in the Annales de Philosophic Chre- 
tienne, and above all Ott, Revue Nationally Decem- 
bre, 1847, VEcole Phalanstcricnne.) 

An ti- Christian morality has been rendered popu- 
lar especially by Gr. Sand, in Lelia, in Jacques, and 
in Consuclo, and by Eugene Sue, in the Mysteries 
of Paris, the Wandering Jew, and in Martin the 
Foundling. The great success of the Wandering 
Jew and the Mysteries of Paris, proves the deep 
corruption of the contemporaneous society. This 
society, whose apology is plead in the Revue des 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 51 

Deux-Mondes, the Journal des Debats, and in La 
Presse, pretends to be infinitely more moral and re- 
ligious than the world of the eighteenth century. 
I have studied with the greatest attention the his- 
tory of the literature of the preceding century, and 
I venture boldly to affirm, without fear of being se- 
riously contradicted by reflecting minds, that in 
France the conspiracy against the sanctity of Chris- 
tian morals has never been stronger or more general 
than at the present time.* Many are deceived by 
the fact, that Catholic dogmas are less openly attack- 
ed. But why should we feign to be ignorant, that 
the war is waged with no less violence, under more 
polished appearances. Besides, when Christian 
morals are insulted, when, in marriage, the funda- 
mental institution of the Catholic family is assailed, 
and the theory of pleasure is substituted for the law 
of devotion, is not Christianity attacked in its essen- 
tial bases ? May Providence, who so severely pun- 
ished the corruption of the eighteenth century, 
preserve us from a repetition of the bloody expia- 
tion of '93 ! 

Rousseau, covered with the leprosy of his exces- 
ses, exhibited himself without blushing in all his 
degradation, and audaciously dared to claim the 



* This passage was written in 1847. 



52 THE TOUCHSTONE OP CHARACTER. 

sympathy of the human race for himself and for his 
life, because he had loved much ! The literature of 
the nineteenth century has seized with eagerness 
upon this idea. This debauching theme has be- 
come the favorite text of the authors of dramas and 
romances. Poetry and Art, whose holy mission is 
to remind men of the sublimity of virtue, of the 
glory of heroes, and of all noble and generous 
thoughts, now present themselves as active schools 
of depraved morality. Two hundred years ago, 
certain books were hidden, like shameful deeds. 
The whole of society would have spurned the man 
who had dared to say: "That is my work." But 
now, in the face of day, one of the iniquities is 
committed, most fitting to outrage every conscience 
which has any remains of courage and modesty. 
Books, wherein the grossest inclinations of the heart 
are represented as the final and legitimate expres- 
sion of duty and of right, are offered, as food, to all 
the minds of this corrupt world. I should never 
cease, were I to point out this entire literature which 
sometimes knows only the lingo of the bagnio, or 
the speech of prostitutes. However, I cannot avoid 
speaking of a celebrated writer, who appears to me 
to apply the fundamental principle of the Confes- 
sions, to the society of the nineteenth century, with 
a vigor of logic and a talent impossible not to ac- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 53 

knowledge. The morality of Lelia is well known. 
M. de Milly (Alphonse du Yalconseil) quotes some 
fragments from Pulcherie's abominable discourses, 
of which he declares himself unable, and not suffi- 
ciently daring, to give a complete idea. This incar- 
nation of voluptuousness, thus terminates one of her 
revolting tirades : " Anacreon has written my litur- 
gy ; I have taken antiquity as my model, the god- 
desses of Greece for my divinities. To keep me 
from despair, I have the religion of pleasure. To 
brave shame, is a virtue, a power, a deed of wis- 
dom !" Lelia is still more odious and detestable, 
and M. de Milly has remarked, with admirable en- 
ergy, "that her language is that of a demon, mad 
at being a woman." — (Alphonse de Milly, Revue 
des romans contemner aires, G. Sand, Lelia.) Never- 
theless, it is concerning the abominable romance of 
Lelia, that M. Lerminier, then Professor in the Col- 
lege of France, Counsellor of State, Master of Be- 
quests, and certes Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 
dared to write these lines, which we„ offer for the 
consideration of fathers of families: "Patience! 
he exclaims, behold the true priestess, the real spoil 
of God. The earth trembles under the impetuous 
tread of Lelia; she appears, and with one bound 
places herself at the head, not only of women but 
of men. An inspired bacchante, she leads in the 

4 



54 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

present age the chorus of intelligences who follow 
her with ardor. On, Lelia ! continue thy triumph- 
antly sad march ! Thou art self-devoted ; shrink 
not, obey thy God! He has sent thee, after the 
Protestant (Mad. de Stael) and the Jewess (Mad. 
de Yarnaghen) to be in the clear light of day the 

poet of the infinite Forsake not the sublime 

boldness @f thy genius ! Restore the laws of love 
and of marriage ! Sing, weep not, and, far from 
being consumed by the divine fire which thou bear- 
est, pour it out upon the world !" — (Lerminier, 
Au dela du Rhin.) 

Has the government censured this cynical and 
anti-social panegyric of so immoral a book ? Mourn 
now (1847), ye conservatives, over the progress of 
passions and bad morals ! We should never cease, 
were we to quote all the passages of the same cha- 
racter. Have not the very men who condemned the 
Jesuits and lax morals, decorated MM. Frederic 
Soulie and de Balsac with the Legion of Honor ? 
The glorious sign that the country places on the 
breasts of its brave defenders has been seen shining 
on the dress of the authors of the DeviVs Memoirs, 
and the Maid with the golden eyes! It is some 
amends that MM. de Falloux, de Ravignan, de 
Montalembert, Lacordaire and Ozanam will, per- 
haps, never belong to the French Academy ! 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 55 

,-The writings of the author of Indiana, seem to 
me the most eloquent and exact development of the 
sentimental theory of the Genevan philosopher. If 
J. J. Rousseau has truly spoken, George Sand is 
not wrong.* You should be just and impartial. 
You place Jean-Jaques in the Pantheon ; and you 
drag Sand to the scaffold ! Yet Rousseau himself 
understood, that his books naturally brought in their 
train all the disastrous consequences, with which the 
works of Sand have been reproached, and he had 
the boldness to say concerning the Nouvelle Hdoise : 
" Any young girl who will open this book, is lost !" 
You blush for those who are more logical, more 
courageous than yourselves ! If you accept the 
Savoyard Vicar, why should Spiridion revolt you ? 



* Rousseau himself was very far from being sure that 
he had truly spoken. On one occasion, he wrote : " I 
cannot think it possible to be virtuous without religion ; 
for a long time I held this false opinion; upon this 
point, I am no longer deceived." — (" Tresors de l'elo- 
quence.") Elsewhere, he says : " I cannot look upon 
any one of my books without shuddering ; instead of 
instructing, I corrupt ; instead of nourishing, I poison ; 
passion misleads me, and with all my fine discourses, I 
am only a wretched criminal."-- ("CEuvres comp." XXIV, 
236 and 3 07.) Byron too, did he not say of himself, 
that he was more Christian than any one believed % 
Captain Medwin relates, that even in the midst of the 
obscure contradictions of his conversation, he never de^ 
nied the Divine Founder of Christianity. We found 



56 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Is not Brother Alexis a worthy successor to the 
Vicar ? Is Madame de Warens, the saint of Rous- 
seau, more noble or more poetical than Indiana 1 
Jaques is a fitting continuation of Wolmar. Taltn- 
tine is but a pin-prick after the Confessions ! 

We have been struck by the close analogy be- 
tween the doctrines of Emile on revelation, and 
those of Spiridion on the development and the fu- 
ture of Christianity. Father Alexis, a priest like 
the Savoyard Vicar, likewise reveals to a neophyte 
the formulas of a new religion. " We do not reject 
the whole of revelation, says he, and the interior 
sense sumces to a certain point ; but we join to it 
additional proofs ; as to the past, the testimony of 
humanity entire ; as to the present, the adherence 
of all pure consciences to the worship of the Divi- 



him one day, says he, sad and silent. At last he said 
to us : " Here is a little book on Christianity which has 
been sent me, and which makes me very uneasy. The 
reasonings appear to me very strong, and the proofs are 
alarming. I do not think you could answer them, 
Shelley ; at least, I am sure I could not, and besides I 
don't wish to do it." When accused of impiety, an ac- 
cusation which he always repelled, he replied : " I am 
no enemy to religion ; quite otherwise ; the proof of 
which is, ihat I am having my daughter brought up a 
good Catholic, in a convent of the Romagna ; for I 
think if we are to have any religion, we cannot have 
too much. I am strongly inclined in favor of Catholic 
dogmas." — (" Tresors de r eloquence.") 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 57 

nity, and the eloquent voice of our own hearts. If 
I understand you rightly, said Angelo, you accept 
all that is eternally divine in revelation, its grand 
ideas upon the Divinity and immortality, the pre- 
cepts of virtue, and the duties thence proceeding. 
And also, interrupted Father Alexis, the great dis- 
coveries in science, the masterpieces of art and poe- 
try, the innovation of reformers in all times, and in 
all countries. All that man calls inspiration, I call 
likewise, revelation ; for man draws from Heaven 
itself his knowledge of the ideal ; and his conquest 
of the sublime truths which lead to it (to Heaven 
or to the ideal?), is a compact, a marriage between 
the human intelligence, which seeks, aspires, de- 
mands, and the divine intelligence, which likewise 
seeks the heart of man, aspires to fill it, and con- 
sents to reign in it We can adore, in a man 

possessing great learning or great virtue, a splendid 
reflection of the Deity. Christ, a time will come 
when new altars, more worthy of thee, will be raised 
in thy honor, which will restore to thee thy true 
greatness, that of having been really the son of the 
woman, and the Saviour, that is the friend of hu- 
manity, and the prophet of the ideal ! And the 
successor of Plato, said Angelo (the neophyte), as 
Plato was of the other prophets whom we venerate, 

and whose disciples we are. . .but free disciples. . . . 

4* 



58 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

It is not only our privilege, but our duty, as well as 
our destiny, to explain them, and to aid in the con- 
tinuation ot their labors. Our mission is, to be their 
successors. It is the will of Grod that we should 
progress, and if He in every age calls Prophets into 
existence, it is, that they may urge the generations 
ever in advance of themselves, as beseems men, and 
not that they may force them to follow, like servile 
flocks. "When Jesus cured the paralytic, he did not 
say to him : i Prostrate thyself and follow me !' but 
4 Arise and walk !' We go towards the Future ; we 
go filled with the Past, and occupying the Present 
with study, meditation, and a continual effort after 
perfection. . . ." — (George Sand, Sjpiridion.) 

To avoid interminable digressions, which would 
turn us aside from the subject we propose to exa- 
mine, I would remark, that Greorge Sand is governed 
by a twofold intention ; and this double idea is but 
the necessary corollary to the sentimental theory of 
the school of Rousseau. "When you have establish- 
ed, as a principle in morals, the holiness of the natu- 
ral impulses, why do you recoil before the vain ob- 
stacles opposed to you by the world ? Can usages 
or laws be made in opposition to the arbiter of the 
just, the beautiful, and the holy ? The affections of 
the heart are so precious, and at the same time so 
invincible, that to crush one of them is an actual 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 59 

crime against human nature, against God Himself, 
the Author and Preserver of all moral order. 

Do we not read in George Sand these words, 
which contain the key to the social revolutions that 
now menace France ? " Society can only exist 
through arbitrary laws, excellent for the masses, but 
stupid and horrible for individuals." — (George 
Sand, Jaques.) One of the characters in Lelia 
dares to say : " The spirit of good and the spirit of 
evil are one, for they are God ; good and evil are 
distinctions created by us ; they are unknown to 
God. 1 '' Does not the philosophy of pantheism, pro- 
fessed by George Sand in her later works, lead to 
ultra-revolutionary consequences ? Doubtless the 
greater part of our readers would think we exagge- 
rated, did we not quote the very words of George 
Sand. In Lelia^ Stenio, worn out with pride, de- 
bauch, voluptuousness, and dissipation, decides upon 
suicide. Before dying, he addresses to God these 
monstrous words, which may be regarded as the 
final expression of moral and religious Radicalism : 
" And Thou, unknown Power, whom formerly I in 
my simplicity adored, mysterious Master of our pal- 
try destinies, whom I still recognise, but before whom 
I no longer bow ; if it be my duty to bend the knee 
and bless thee for this bitter life, manifest thyself, 
and let me at least hope to be heard by thee ! But 



60 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

what have I to hope or to fear ? "What am I, that 
I should excite thy anger or merit thy love ? What 
have I accomplished here of good or of evil ? I 
have obeyed the organisation given me ; I have ex- 
hausted all things real, and have aspired to the im- 
possible ; I have performed my task as a man. If 
I have shortened its duration by a few days, what is 
it to thee ? If I have extinguished the light of my 
intelligence by the abuse of pleasure, what matters 
it to the universe, that Stenio leaves in the memo- 
ries of men some hundreds of verses more or less ? 
If thou art an irritable and vindictive Master, life 
can be for me no refuge, and do as I may, I cannot 
escape the expiations of the other life. If Thou 
art just and good, thou wilt receive me in thy bosom, 
and thou wilt cure the ills from which I suffer. If 
thou existest not. . . .Oh ! then am. I myself God, and 
my own master, and I can break both temple and 
idol! . . ." — (Alphonse de Milly [A. de Valcon- 
seil], Revue ies Romans, G-. Sand, Lelia.) 

Nor is this a case by itself. Look into Andre, 
into Valentine, into the Compagnon du tour de 
France, into Consuelo ; you will find all the fragile 
barriers of nobility, of modesty, of position, of for- 
tune, of religion, of social prejudices, shattered in 
the presence of the holy, the irresistible, and ever 
victorious law of love ! Do you think that marriage, 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 61 

that once venerated basis of civil society, will arrest 
this expansive revolution of love, which is to trans- 
form the whole modern world ? Do not fear ! In 
Indiana, and in Jaques, ample justice will be meted 
out to that antiquated remnant of Christian preju- 
dices ! In Consuelo and in the Countess of Rudol- 
stadt, you will find a new Gospel, in the name of a 
new Grod, loose the marriage bonds of those whom 
love has ceased to unite ! It will even become im- 
possible for a woman to remain faithful, because it is 
a crime to do violence to love 

All this is logical, and you have no right to com- 
plain. But what a lesson, and what an end ! Blessed 
be Heaven which permits the light to shine, notwith- 
standing the positive intentions of certain persons, 
who labor only for the triumph of evil ! The system 
which dictated the Confessions and the Nouvelle He- 
loise, is not yet a century old, and it has already 
produced Indiana and Consuelo, while the philoso- 
phy of Emile has reached a climax in the book enti- 
tled Humanity, and in the Sketch of a Philosophy ! 
Behold the seal of reprobation with which G-od 
marks all evil doctrines • they can never halt in 
their providential development, and sooner or later 
they reach the abyss. 



CHAPTER II. 



MELANCHOLY. 



I HAVE LOVED. I HAVE BEEN LOVED ! MISERABLE ME ! WHAT CHAINS OF 
LINKED SORROWS ! AND ONCE BOUND. WITH WHAT RODS OF IRON HAVE JEA- 
LOUSY, SUSPICION. VANITY. ANGER, AND CONTENTION SCOURGED ME! — (St. 

Augustine.) 



In the preceding chapter, I made the assertion, 
that the heart can never lead to virtue ; I now add, 
that it is equally incapable of conducting to happi 
ness. I could find a thousand reasons in support of 
my position. It is a very agreeable reflection, that 
the greatest and most able minds have ever exhorted 
men to detach themselves from the fragile and pe- 
rishable things of earth, and have directed them 
towards the imperishable world of thought, where 
reign eternally light and virtue. Rousseau himself 
perceived in a confused way, that in order to live 
calmly and peacefully, we must detach ourselves 
from the passionate affection inspired by creatures. 
Rewrote to Madame B. : "That internal void of 
which you complain is never felt but in hearts made 
to be filled ; contracted Marts are never conscious 
of a vacuum, because they are always full of 
nothings; while, on the contrary fztfcere are some 



the Touchstone of character. 63 

SO craving, that they can never be satisfied by the 
miserable beings surrounding them. If nature has 
made you the rare and fatal gift of a heart too sen- 
sitive to the necessity of happiness, seek nothing 
out of it : it must feed upon its own substance. All 
the felicity, Madame, which we would draw from 
that which is foreign to ourselves, is a false felicity. 
.... If you are what I believe you to be, you will 
never be happy but through yourself; for that end, 
seek nothing out of yourself. That moral sense, so 
rare among men ; that exquisite feeling of the beau- 
tiful, the true, and the just, which always reacts 
upon ourselves, holds the soul, so endowed, in a 
continual state of rapture, which is the most de- 
lightful of enjoyments. The rigor of fate, the 
wickedness of men, unforseen evils, calamities of 
all kinds, may benumb for a time, but can never ex- 
tinguish it ; and sometimes, when almost crushed 
under the weight of human atrocity, a sudden explo- 
sion may render back all its original brilliancy. . . ." 
— (J. J. Rousseau, Correspondence^ dated 1770.) 
Who would believe this to be the same man who 
dared to sign the obscene pages of the Confessions ? 
Even from the midst of the impurities of pagan- 
ism we. may hear a thousand eloquent voices, speak- 
ing with a conviction full of persuasion and energy, 
of the sadness into which subjection to the affections 



64 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

of sense, and the heavy slavery of the passions, 
plunge the soul. If the philosophers of the senti- 
mental school, were to appear in the presence of the 
powerful intellects of antiquity, would not the latter 
fancy they were listening to the effeminate philoso- 
phy of the gardens of Epicurus, and the impure 
language of the sophists of Cyrene ? Yes, I am 
fully convinced that their contempt would bring 
blushes to the cheeks of those men, who, nourished 
in the pure light of the Gospel, have preferred to 
its divine morality the sensuality and licentiousness 
of vanquished paganism. 

Let us hear on this question Franz de Champagny, 
the eloquent historian of the Ccesars. The author 
of this fine work depicts the revival of pagan impu- 
rity in the midst of the Saturnalia of '93 : ■' With 
paganism in worship came paganism in morals. 
Through the love of paradox, some have amused 
themselves of late by transforming into models of 
chastity and domestic virtue, those men in whom, 
as they say, we must recognise some roughness 
of form and some inequalities of character ; eulogiums 
have not been wanting on their austerity, nay, their 
republican sanctity ; I will not trouble these harm- 
less panegyrics ; I confine myself to the acts of au- 
thority. If pagan impurity were not sufficiently 
manifested by the choice of those shameful god- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 65 

desses, who would have made the prostitutes of- Co- 
rinth blush in the temple of Venus, was it not clearly 
written in the law passed by the Lycurguses of the 
Convention, which assured to the guilty woman the 
price of her dishonor ? in that system of civil right, 
effaced thank Gi-od the day after its birth, which de- 
clared bastardy legitimate, dishonored the family, 
debased marriage, annihilated paternal rights, broke 
the conjugal union at the capricious demand of either 
husband or wife, and re-established, under a diffe- 
rent name and with some new forms, the ancient 
right of repudiation ?" — (Les Ccesars, IV, A word 
of modern Paganism. See also the law of June 
28th, 1793 ; the decree of Feb. 5th, 1794 ; the law 
of Sept. 7th, 1793 ; the decree of Sept. 25th, 1792 ; 
the law of April 28th, 1794.) 

But what would the mighty geniuses, whom the 
Grospel has produced in the bosom of Christian civil- 
isation, say, could they reappear among us r Oh ! 
with what horror would these illustrious thinkers re- 
treat into their eternal abodes, could they hear the 
wicked maxims they so combatted, now boldly ad- 
vocated ? 

What, however, do the men of whom we speak 
care for the disgust which they excite in all pure 
minds ? Have they ever measured the abyss which 
separates them from all ancient tradition ? Blinded 



66 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

by an insane desire for happiness and pleasure they 
have concentrated on this passion all their hopes for 
the future, and to this dream have they sacrificed 
virtue in this world, and eternal blessedness in the 
next. Oh ! but I pity these poor souls, wandering 
amid the endless aberrations of the mind and heart! 
How gladly would I give them a little repose, and 
light, and peace ! Indeed, I am quite sure that all 
have not an invincible attachment to evil, and it is 
that burning thirst for happiness by which they are 
consumed which blinds them entirely to their true 
interests in time, and for eternity. But I appeal 
to experience ; without virtue and truth, can there 
be real and lasting peace ? The Scriptures repre- 
sent men of pleasure as crying out at the end of 
their career : " We wearied ourselves in the way of 
iniquity and destruction, and have walked through 
hard ways."* 

I appeal to you, Jerome and Augustin ! Have 
you not both, with fiery eagerness, drained all the 
cups of pleasure ? Have not your souls, during 
long years, loved everything ? Did you not break 
through all salutary restraints ? Your hearts burst 
out on the whole of creation, like a torrent without 



* " Lassati sumus in via iniquitatis et perditionis, et 
ambulavimus vias difficiles." — Wisdom, v. 7. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 67 

bounds and without banks : life seemed far too short, 
to exhaust the intense desire of loving which de- 
voured all your being. But then came days of suf- 
fering and tribulation of heart ! Then did the feel- 
ing of truth and eternity enter into your souls, like 
that sharp sword which penetrates even to the mar- 
row of the bones. 

It is interesting to hear how the eloquent Bishop 
of Hippo relates, in the sorrow of his penitence, 
the guilty ardors of his first loves, in the second 
book of his Confessions: "When St. Augustine," 
M. Saint-Marc Grirardin very felicitously remarks, 
"paints that Urst insurrection of the senses, I ad- 
mire the modesty of his language ; and do not think 
this reserve the result of coldness, as his repent- 
ance exaggerates rather than diminishes his own idea 
of his faults ; he describes them most forcibly, but 
without the slightest violation of decency. He is 
true, without being immodest; and bold, without 
being cynical. St. Augustine speaks of his loves 
with a reserve mingled with shame. The recitals 
are few, and nothing is introduced for the sake of 
giving interest to the adventures ; such interest 
would have been a new sin. As much as Rousseau 
designedly embellishes his descriptions with charms 
and graces, so much does St. Augustine carefully 
hide the meltings of his soul." — (Saint-Marc Q-i- 
bardin, Essais de litterature, II, S. Augustin.) 



68 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

And you Jerome, have you ever regretted having 
preferred the grotto at Bethlehem, to the intoxica- 
ting pleasures of Rome ? Many times must you 
have said with the repentant Augustin : Sero te cog- 
novi, sero te amavi, pwlchritudo increata ; " Too late 
have I known Thee ; too late loved Thee, Beauty 
uncreated !" "How in a moment," he says again, 
surprised at the miraculous change which grace had 
effected in him, and recounting no longer his mise- 
ries, but the mercies of the Lord; "how in one 
moment did I find pleasure in renouncing the crimi- 
nal enjoyments of the world, and how sweet it was 
to abandon what I had so feared to lose! For 
Thou, my God ! who art the only true and sove- 
reign good capable of filling a soul, Thou wert to 
me the substitute for all pleasures ; and the joy of 
finding myself ruled by Thee, the joy of having 
conquered myself, was for me more blissful than all 
my past delights. " 

St. Augustin and St. Jerome felt alike that the 
delights of Rome and Milan were not suflicient to 
satisfy the boundless cravings of the heart of man. 
St. Augustine goes even farther: he proves, with 
admirable eloquence, that nothing created can satisfy 
the devouring cravings of the heart of man. " Si- 
lence, says he in the Confessions, silence to the voice 
of the flesh, to the creatures of earth and sea ! 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 69 

Silence to the heavens, silence to the soul itself, to 
the thoughts of life, to the dreams of the night, and 
the illusions of the day! Let every tongue he 
silent, let every sign be effaced, let all that is of 
time and the moment vanish ! Wherefore is the 
cry perpetual which the universe utters to the glory 
of the Creator : It is God, it is the Eternal who has 
created us? No, I will hear only the voice of God : 
let Grod speak, let Him alone speak amid the uni- 
versal silence, not with the perishable tongue of the 
flesh, nor with the harmonious voice of the angels, 
nor with the sound of the winds, nor with the em- 
blem of the divine symbols ; Him alone will I hear, 
and at the sound of His voice our souls will be lifted 
up, and our thoughts will be lost in the eternity of 
the Divine Wisdom." And you, Rousseau, I 
ask you, did you ever find that happiness after which 
you so long sighed ? Undeceived with regard to the 
illusions of the heart and the passions, Augustin 
and Jerome sleep in the Lord, full of calmness and 
peace. You, who were not enslaved by their Chris- 
tian prejudices, you found, no doubt, in your own 
heart, a life more full of joys and consolations! 
Freed from the shackles of faith, you must have 
been able, in the full play of all the natural impul- 
ses, to seize upon a much truer happiness ! But, 
O Philosopher, why then is the history of your life. 

5* 



70 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

written doubtless by you with so much candor to 
ghow us the paths which lead to happiness, so over- 
towing with bitterness ? Why is your heart so torn, 
your soul so lacerated ? Have not love and the 
passions satisfied your being ? Whence comes that 
cruel disenchantment, portrayed in every word of 
your soul's revelations ? Ah ! I comprehend why 
\ ou wrote to one of your friends, not to leave the 
simple and upright paths of our Christian life ! I 
1 i ,7 now, why your last days were so cruel, and so 
1 utter ; I can explain your pains and anguish ; I 
Qy understand the mysterious and despairing 
d«ath, which crowned the drama of the Confessions! 

The death of Rousseau has given rise to many 
conjectures. Madame de Stael is of the opinion 
that he terminated his life by suicide. " Rousseau," 
says she', " after having passed his life in the midst 
f the most tormenting anxieties, terminated his me- 
lancholy existence by poison ; the crowning incon- 
sistency of the most inconsistent of men." If the 
suicide may be doubted, the anxieties cannot be de- 
nied. 

Let us turn for a moment and contrast this incu- 
rable grief, with the joy which filled the heart of the 
illustrious Stolberg after his conversion ! " My 
heart," said he then, "inundated by a torrent of 
holy joy, should be a temple, where the praises of 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 71 

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, may be unceasingly 
heard ; for He has had mercy on Sophia and myself, 
and He will be merciful to my children. He has 
regarded with a kind indulgence my desire of know- 
ing the truth, a desire to which He Himself gave 
birth ; He has heard the prayers addressed to Him 
for me by pious souls, prostrated at the foot of his 
altars." "Blessed be Jesus Christ," were the last 
words of Stolberg. His mortal remains were not 
borne to a rationalistic Pantheon ; but on an unpre- 
tending stone, were carved these simple and touch- 
ing words : " God so loved the world, as to give 
His only begotten Son; that whosoever be- 
LIEVETH in Him, may not perish, but may have 
life everlasting." It would seem that the cele- 
brated Lavater, the friend of Stolberg, must have 
had a presentiment of his admirable death, when he 
composed the following beautiful passage: "One 
day, a virtuous man met Death. Hail ! messenger 
of immortality, I bid thee hail ! Thus was he greeted 
by the virtuous man. How, said Death, thou son 
of sin, dost thou not tremble before me ? No ; he 
who has no cause to tremble before himself, need 
not tremble before thee. Dost thou not shudder at 
the aspect of the maladies whose groaning train pre- 
cedes me, and at the cold sweat dropping from my 
wings ? No, answered the virtuous man. And why 



T2 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

dost thou not shudder? Because those maladies, 
and that sweat, announce thy presence. And who 
then art thou, mortal, who dost not fear me ? I am 
a Christian /" 

Heap together as many sophistical arguments as 
you will, pervert principles and laws, yet will you 
eternally find in the heart of man an abyss, ever 
deep, ever craving, which nothing can fill. Human 
nature hears 'engraved in the very depths of its es- 
sence the ineffaceable impress of the infinite. It is 
vain to hope that these vain delights, these illusions, 
these ephemeral passions, can ever fully respond to 
the requirements of your soul. There is, in all cre- 
ated things, a fountain of weakness and impotence, 
which must ever render them incapable of satisfying 
the demands of the heart. That which saddens and 
torments you, men of pleasure, is the noblest 
privilege, the truest greatness of your nature ; for 
there is neither love nor power capable of filling the 
immeasurable depths of our longings and our needs. 
Consider likewise him who, separated from Chris- 
tian convictions, desires no other law than the 
dreams of his heart, nor other love than human pas- 
sion. He is restless and agitated ; he flies to ex- 
citement, and finally, becomes exhausted. The 
world is not vast enough, nor is nature sufficiently 
beautiful ; there is no heart with fire intense enough 



TEE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER, 73 

to comprehend and love him. Such is Rousseau, 
such is Werther, such is Don Juan, such is One- 
guine, such is Foscolo, such is Obermann, such is 
Otis, such is Eene, such is Sautelet, such is 
Jacques. The same sentiments appear again in an- 
tiquity. Aristotle who, as is universally known, 
abandoned himself during his whole life to the gui- 
dance of his passions, found so little felicity in hig 
unregulated existence that he denied the reality of 
happiness among men ; asserting that they possessed 
of it only a deceitful shadow. — (Ethics^ X, 8.) 
But let us listen a little : 

" Childe Harold basked him in the noontide sun, 
Disporting here and there like any other fly, 

Nor deem'd before his little day was done 
One blast might chill him into misery. 

Eut long ere scarce a third of his passed by, 
Worse than adversity the Childe befell ; 

He felt the fulness of satiety : 
Then loathed he in his native land to dwell, 
Which seemed to him more lone than Eremite's 
sad cell. 



And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart, 
And from his fellow-bachanals would flee ; 

'Tis said at times the sullen tear would start, 
But Pride congealed the drop within his ee. 



74 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Apart he stalked in joyless revery, 
And from his native land resolved to go 

And visit scorching climes beyond the sea. 
With pleasure drugged he almost longed for woe, 
And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades 
below." 

Presently he adds : 

" And dost thou ask what secret wo 
I bear corroding joy and youth % 

* * * 

It is that settled, ceaseless gloom 
The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore ; 

That will not look beyond the tomb, 
But cannot hope for rest before. 

What exile from himself can flee 1 
To zones, though more and more remote, 

Still, still pursues, where'er I be, 
The blight of life— the demon Thought 

Yet otWrs rapt in pleasure seem, 

And taste of all that I forsake ; 
Oh ! may they still of transport dream, 

And ne'er, at least like me, awake ! 

Through many a clime 'tis mine to go, 

With many a retrospection cursed ; 
And all my solace is to know, 

Whate'er betides, I've Imown the worst 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 75 

What is that worst 1 Nay do not ask — 

In pity from the search forbear : 
Smile on — nor venture to unmask 

Man's heart, and view the hell that's there." 

Rene is no less dismayed by the mysteries and 
agitations of his passionate heart : 

" Eternity ! Perhaps in my capacity for loving 
have I comprehended this incomprehensible word 
Heaven has known, and still knows, at this very mo- 
ment, when my agitated hand traces these lines, 
what I might have been : men have never known 
me. 

"I write under the tree of the desert, on the 
ehores of a nameless river, in a valley shaded by the 
game forests which covered it when time began. 
Imagine, Celuta, that the heart of Rene is now 
open before thee : seest thou the wonderful world 
within it? From this heart come forth flames, 
which find no food, which devour creation, without 
being satisfied, which would devour even thee. Be- 
ware, virtuous woman ! fly from this abyss, leave it 
in my bosom. . . ." — (Rene at Natchez y by Chateau- 
briand. ) 

Again, is it not one of George Sand's heroes who 
pens these despairing lines : 

" My soul is resigned," says Jaques, u but still 
suffering, and I die sad, sad as he, whose only refuge 



76 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

is a faint hope in Heaven. I will go to the crests of 
the glaciers, and pray from the bottom of my heart ; 
perhaps faith and enthusiasm may descend upon me 
at that solemn hour when, severed from men and 
from life, I cast myself into the abyss, raising my 
hands to Heaven, and crying with fervor : justice ! 
justice of God!" 

Has not the pen of Jean-Jaques dropped these 
words, so full of bitterness : 

" My body suffers, and my heart groans." 

"Petrarch's poetry," sadly remarks Ugo Foscolo, 
" inspires us with a desire of running, though in 
vain, after a perfect happiness, until we blindly fall 
into that despair, which does not long tarry, when 
hope, stricken by terror, has fled, and grief, like a 
giant, comes to fill alone the frightful void."* 

The soul of St. Preux, Jean-Jaques' ideal, is not 
less deeply troubled than that of the celebrated Ita- 
lian poet: 

" Yes my lord," exclaims he to his friend, " my 
soul is oppressed with the weight of life !" 

Hear likewise the author of Notre-Dame : 
" To see our Spring, our morning, our fresh youth, 
Fade in the blaze of noon, without one hope 
That time the past, the lost, will e'er restore ; 



* " Quando, percossa da terror, s'invola 
" Dal tuo volto la speme, e la gigante 
" Doglia ne incombra il voto orrendo sola. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 77 

To lose illusion, hope, and feel that we 

Grow old beneath the daily heavier weight 

Repentance lays on our advancing years ! 

To seek through art, through verse, through journeys 

lone, 
Through distant skies, through stormy, pathless seas, 
To smooth one wrinkle on our troubled brows ; 
To ask again that age too flushed for sleep, 
To tell ourselves that we have been most sad, 
Most miserable, and such dreaming fools ; 
To feel to live is merely to exist ; 
And, older by ten years, — to steal away, 
And pass the day in reading o'er, with tears, 
A few old letters, relics of past love ! 
To fail at last, grow old like faded flowers ; 
To see our hair grow white, our years fall fast ; 
To mourn our childhood, and our withered youth ; 
To drink the bitter lees, the sole remains 
Of pungent perfumes, and of empty foam!" 

Is the voluptuous poet of Elvira, the sensual au- 
thor of the Fall of an Angel, more content with 
fate? 

" My heart, of all so weary, e'en of hope, 
No longer asketh anything from fate j 
Ye valleys of my childhood, give me yet 
A refuge undisturbed, to wait for death. 
Two brooks, there hidden under verdant boughs, 
Describe with winding course, that valley's bounds ; 

6 



78 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

One moment do they mingle sounds and waves, 
Then soon are lost, not far from their pure source. 
Like them, hath flowed my winding stream of life ; 
Hath nameless vanished, to return no more ; 
Their waves are limpid, but my troubled soul 
Hath ne'er reflected even one bright day. 
Too much I've known, too deeply felt and loved I 
I come, still living, Lethe's calm to seek. 
Fair vale, be thou for me dark Lethe's shore : 
My only hope is henceforth, to forget/' 

Elsewhere the poet cries : 

" Why dost thou never cease to sigh 

My soul ? answer me ! 
Whence comes this heavy weight of grief 

Which now oppresseth thee 1 
Thou hast not followed to the grave 

With tears, thy last fond friend ; 
The quiet star that guards thy fate 

Doth still above thee bend ; 
And envy asks, with wondering eye, 
What cause hast thou to weep and sigh 1 

The earth hath many lovely climes, 

The Heaven smileth still, 
For Glory yet, there's space enough, 

And Love, the heart to fill. 
Fair Nature offers to thy search 

So much that's strange and new 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 79 

So much no eye hath yet profaned ; 

Why wither with salt dew 
The harvest on life's sunny slope, 
The still ungleaned fields of Hope P 

This impotence, which pursues human nature in 
the midst of all affections that are not infinite, seizes 
on the slaves of pleasure, and drives them to des- 
pair. They desire to attach themselves finally to 
something ; but they find nothing which seems wor- 
thy of the dream of happiness that has deceived 
them. A voice continually cries out to them : 
"On! On!" And they advance in life, without any 
diminution in the bitterness and emptiness of their 
existence. Thus do we behold Milton's Satan fall 
into fathomless depths, and lose himself in the abyss, 
without an arm to stay and guide him. 

" unbeliever, unfortunate man," says a cele- 
brated priest, " how pitiable is thy fate ! Thou 
pursuest phantoms, thou knowest thou art self- 
deceived, and dost not shrink from the shameful 
avowal! But how vain are thy efforts to satisfy 
nature, eager for vengeance ! . . . . Great G-od ! this 
sublime voice, this echo of Heaven, this divine in- 
stinct which, with irresistible eloquence, speaks 
within thee, which reminds thee that thou wast 
made for things eternal and infinite, this winning 
call to happy days, to days filled with a perfect 



80 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

calm, this loving impulse, proceeding from Heaven, 
from reason, from nature, which unceasingly solicits 
thee to seek an everlasting peace, the plenitude of 
joy, and the most happy destiny : all this is then 
nothing to thee ; thou closest the avenues of thy 
soul to this mysterious voice ! Truly, the instinct 
of happiness is immortal in every human bosom. 
This is the faithful friend whose cry often seems to 
us importunate, but who never ceases to counsel, to 
reprove, to reason with us on our most precious pos- 
session. She will never cease to speak. Is there a 
heart hard enough to remain deaf to the charm of 
her words? Can we then be unconscious of the 
wrong we inflict, when we outrage her, by consider- 
ing her inimical and hypocritical ? And if we are 
wretched, it is because we have willed so to be, since 
we are hostile to the instinct of happiness. But 
what a life will they lead in this world, who hearken 
not to this gentle voice, who think it can mislead, 
who deem it the voice of a false and treacherous 
friend, who, in a word, place all happiness in illu- 
sions and in dreams ? Alas ! not a hope remains 
to them ; for there is no more hope for those who 
believe it to be vain. Their days glide in sad and 
mournful succession into the abyss of the past, 
without bringing happiness, without bringing even 
the expectation thereof." — (Rosmini-Serbati, _Es- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 81 

sai sur VEsperance. ) Alas ! how common are now 
mong us, those poor, suffering souls, who have not 
hope for life in this world, and who will to have none 
for that to come ! We hear them accusing the cold- 
ness of Heaven, human customs, social prejudices, 
the poverty of minds, and the littleness of hearts. 
Existence, which they formerly dreamed so brilliant 
and beautiful, now seems to them only a martyrdom, 
without the crown and glory. They complain that 
none comprehend their misery, nor understand the 
true means of consoling their infinite sadness-* But 
who could ever cure the bleeding wounds of the 
heart, and calm its eternal repinings ? You were 
not willing to accept the cross, and the cross which 
you have spurned, now crushes and destroys you ! 
You preferred pleasure to all law, and lo ! sorrow 
envelops you as a burning mantle, a true tunic of 
the Centaur ! 



* The lines which Escousse and Lebras wrote before 
eommitting suicide, are well known : 

11 Farewell, thou sad and sterile earth, 

Chilling sky, and frozen day ! 
Now like a sprite of lonely birth, 

Unperceived I'll steal away. 
Ye ever-living palms, ye fair, 
False, dreams of burning souls, farewell ! 
I fold my wings, I gasp for air. 
Farewell I" 

6* 



82 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Life is not ours, and we can never fashion it ac- 
cording to our caprices, or our unregulated affec- 
tions. It is written, that the whole world shall fight 
against the unwise,* and the word of the Lord is 
verified in you, incarnated in your whole existence. 
The creatures of this world have made your happi- 
ness and your sole hope, and already do all creatures 
rise up against you, escape from 7our desires, fly 
your lore, and leave you to the boundless solitude 
of your^ own souls ! Alas ! what years can bring 
you finally peace and joy? Behold those which 
are already past, the sweet days of pleasure and of 
fleeting illusions; the Spring roses are already fa- 
ded ; and the festive crowns are withered on your 
wrinkled brows. Oh! how melancholy will your 
old age be, old age, which is for all so sad and 
weary ! What memories can console you, and what 
hope will support your steps, which totter on their 
pathway to the grave ? The remembrance of plea- 
sure brings no solace when the evil days are come. 
Virtue can think of her sacrifices, of her devotion 
of her awakening in immortality ; but you, where is 
your devotion, where are your recollections of vir- 
tue ? What have you done for immortality ? The 



* Pugnabit orbis terrarum contra insensatos. — Wis- 
dom, v, 21. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 83 

grave is so cold and icy, that there are very few who 
dare to look upon it without a secret terror. And 
then, Eternity is so fearful, and so dark ! Ah no ! 
it is impossible you should be happy ! 

We may find, even among the writers of the sen- 
timental school, many ideas confirmatory of that 
which we are endeavoring to establish. Werther, 
Ewen, Sautelet, Escousse, Lebras, Chatterton, are 
so ill satisfied in this world, that they take refuge in 
eternity. Childe Harold, Don Juan, Tsame, Frol- 
lo, Antony, Monte-Ohristo are all disgusted with 
life. Obermann, Aleko, Brulart, and Rousseau 
curse modern civilisation. It may be interesting, in 
order to judge of the tendencies of the sentimental 
school, to read the last conversation of Ewen and 
Theresa in Eugene Sue's Theresa Dunoyer : " If 
you desire to write to any one . . . ., there is time, 
said Ewen. Silence is the worthier course, replied 
Theresa. True. ... As for me, when I pressed the 
hand of the Abbe de Kerouellan, I bade him fare- 
well from the bottom of my heart. My friend, how 
far is it by sea, from here to the point of Kergal ? 
Two leagues. And this wind .... is against the 
passage thither ? With this wind no pilot would 
dare the voyage. He would certainly perish. Then 
M. de Ker-Ellio adds with a solemn tone : You 
have reflected, Theresa ? I have reflected. You 



84 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

wish it ? I do. I am wrong in consenting to it. 
This resolution is common to us both, my friend . . 
Which of us first proposed it ? ... It would be dif- 
ficult to say. . . . Your share in it, is having chosen 
the anniversary of our marriage for . . . — For our 
deliverance, Theresa. . . Have I done ill ? Oh no ! . . . 
But you, have you reflected . . . Have you decided ? 
I wish it were to-morrow. . . . Sometimes only . . . 
an idea . . . — What idea ? Suicide incurs eternal 
punishment. We do not kill ourselves, my friend, 
Mor-Nader (a crazy old pilot, who passes for a sor- 
cerer) proposes a sea excursion ... we accept. . . . 
That is true. We shall leave to casuists an interest- 
ing question for discussion, said Ewen, smiling sadly. 
Our burden is too heavy, on the passage we throw 
it aside, that is all ! Whom do we injure, Ewen ? 
No one. — No one, Theresa. You generously gave 
me your hand to advance the prospects of that poor 
child, who is no more ; I have loved you ... I love 
you now, as the most tender of brothers. - . . and 
yet, what has our life been? — Miserable, oh ! most 
miserable. . . . Friendship has not sufficed to console 
us. I feel now as deeply as ever the desertion of 
the man to whom I sacrificed everything. . . . He 
was infamous, yet I cannot forget him. . . .You love 
me ever, and notwithstanding your admirable devo- 
tion, I can never feel for you more than friendship. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 85 

. . . It is the will of fate What are we to do ? 

That which we are about to do, Theresa ! That 
unfortunate child bound you to life. . . . through you, 
it bound me also ; its death has crushed our last 
hope. ... weakness of our nature ! We have not 
sufficient courage to accept our position, to offer our 
grief to God, and to continue our sad life, supported 
by one another. Why live? answered Theresa. 
You can no more renounce your love for me, than I 
can forget that man ; our strength has failed, the 
struggle crushes us, let us go ! ! /" 

But our conclusion finds its most brilliant exam- 
ples in the writings of George Sand, the most elo- 
quent, as well as the most logical interpreter of the 
system of Rousseau. Is Indiana happy ? She has 
however reached the final limits of independence in 
the passions and the heart, since she has, with vio- 
lence, broken the most sacred bonds. Is Valentine 
happy ? Yet has she, to serve her love, crushed in 
her path all the idle prejudices of the world. Is 
Magnus happy ? But has he not trampled under 
foot, in the service of his passion, all that is deemed 
holy among men ? And Trenmor, does he know 
what happiness is ? Yet what has he not braved ? 
Juliette, Horace, Jaques, are they content with 
fate ? In every page of these books, where reigns 
a corruption so deep, that we are more surprised 



86 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

than indignant at finding a woman express, without 
blushing, such revolting imaginations ; in e very- 
page, is found a feeling of unconquerable sadness. 
It seems as if the author, penetrated to the depths 
of the soul by the weariness of the passions and 
their total disgust, can no longer speak in any tones, 
but those bereft of meekness and consolation. In 
Indiana, Sir Adolphus Brown prepares Indiana for 
suicide, by expounding to her a strange theory, 
which he terminates in these words : " The baptism 
of sorrow has sufficiently purified our souls ; let us 
render them to Him who gave them." Elsewhere 
in the same author, we read these significant words : 
" When the life of a man becomes hurtful to others, 
burdensome to himself, and useless to all, suicide is 
a legitimate act, which he may accomplish, if not 
without regret at having lived in vain, at least with- 
out remorse for having put an end to his existence. " 
— (Gteorge Sand, Jaques.) Some time before his 
self-murder, Sautelet wrote to one of his friends : 
" Thou dost not know the wicked thought which has 
just entered my mind ! It is a desire of blowing 
out my brains, in order to terminate my doubts. If 
within a year or two, life does not become clear to we, 
I will put an end to it." — (See Sainte-Beuve's Por- 
traits Contemporains.) Bourdaloue, with his usual 
penetration, thus explains the mysterious causes of 
this incurable grief: * 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 87 

" There is no sin," says he, "which more readily 
exposes the sinner to the temptation of despair. 
St, Paul tells us: Desper -antes semetipsos tradiderunt 
impudicitice. I conjure you, my brethren, says he 
to the Ephesians, not to live as those who, despair- 
ing, have given themselves up to the working of all 
uncleanness : In operationem immunditice omnis. For 
the most ordinary effect of impurity is, to ruin the 
whole edifice of grace in the soul, overthrowing even 
the foundation, which is Christian Hope. But again, 
asks St. Chrysostom, of what, and of whom, does 
the licentious man despair ? He despairs, rejoins 
the same holy doctor, of his conversion, he despairs 
of his perseverance, he despairs of the pardon of 
his sins ; and even should his crimes be pardoned, 
he despairs of his own will, he despairs of Grod and 
of himself. Can there be a more afflicting and me- 
lancholy end ? He despairs of his conversion ; for 
what are the means, he says to himself, or rather 
the spirit of impurity causes him to say, what are 
the means by which I may break my chains ; how 
am I to tear from my heart a passion, which makes 
the whole pleasure of my life ; how can I renounce, 
in good faith, that to which, in still better faith, I 
am most strongly bound ? Were I to say I desire 
so to do, would I not lie to the Holy Grhost ? And 
if I have not strength enough firmly to resolve, and 



88 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

firmly to will, am I not the most unfortunate and 
Grod-forsaken of men ? Even suppose he be con- 
verted, he despairs of his perseverance ; for what 
can I hope from myself, continues he, after so many 
follies and changes ? If I say this very day to God, 
that I will arise from my misery, and that the reso- 
lution I have formed shall be lasting, will having 
thus thought and expressed myself, place me in any 
more fitting state for carrying it into execution ? 
Have I not a thousand times made the same resolu- 
tion, and a thousand times have I not again found 
myself the same I was before ? Why think that 
my present resolutions will be more durable ? And 
why flatter myself that I will no longer be a reed 
shaken by the wind, trembling and bending at the 
breath of the lightest zephyr ? By so willing, by so 
promising, will my nature be changed ? Will my 
inclinations be different ? Will I receive greater 
assistance ; will the remedies granted me be more 
efficacious than those I have so often rendered use- 
less ? 

"Finally he despairs both of Grod and of himself: 
of Grod, because He is a Grod of Holiness, who can 
neither approve nor suffer evil ; of himself, because 
being, as St. Paul says, sold under sin, Venumdatus 
sub peccato, he can no longer love virtue ; of Grod, 
because he has so often abused His patience and 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 89 

mercy ; of himself, because he has the liveliest con- 
viction of his own instability and inconstancy ; finally 
of God and of himself, because he sees between 
(rod and himself infinite contradictions, which he 
believes he will never be able to reconcile, and which 
incline him to deliver himself to the desires of his 
heart: Desperantes semetipsos tradiderunt impudi- 



It is not then wise to listen to the inclinations of 
the heart, and to throw aside all the sacred tradi- 
tions of order and duty ! Grod has no need of our 
love and our desires ; but we, poor, miserable crea- 
tures, we cannot dispense with His paternal care. 
If we abandon Him, He leaves us to our own sad- 
ness, as to the worst of punishments ; He leaves us 
to the agitations of our mind and heart, to the bitter 
feeling of our own helplessness, to wretchedness and 
sorrow. Happy are we if in this profound abyss, 
we recognise the hand that strikes us ; if, instead of 
insulting Heaven, like Groethe and Voltaire, we ac- 
knowledge, with Silvio Pellico, eternal justice, and 
sacred truth ! 

But it maybe asked: "Does virtue preserve from 
the r endings of the heart ? Do we not constantly 
see minds, even in the bosom of Christianity, con- 
sumed by an unconquerable melancholy ? Must not 
painful sacrifices be made, in plucking out the eye 

V 



90 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

that scandalises, and in cutting off the hand that is 
an obstacle to our salvation ? Did not St. Paul 
mourn with deep anguish over the agitations of his 
heart ? Does not Bossuet speak of an invincible 
ennui, which torments humanity ? Does not the 
Church herself, represent her children weeping and 
mourning in this valley of tears ? Do not the Scrip- 
tures teach, that every creature groaneth and tra- 
vaileth in pain, and that the sons of Adam are bowed 
under a heavy yoke ? Why then reproach sensual- 
ity with this universal sadness, this cry of distress, 
which bursts forth from all hearts ?" 

I can very well conceive, that superficial minds 
should be forcibly struck by an analogy, which dis- 
appears, as soon as we survey the realities of things, 
with the scrutinising glance of close observation. 
As there are two kinds of joy, so are there two kinds 
of sadness ; the joy of worldly souls filled with 
licence and sensuality endeavors to forget, through 
the intoxication of the passions, the incurable mise- 
ries of existence ; but Christian joy is like that of 
Andromache, a smile mingled with tears. Do you 
think that this sadness, which is blended in our 
hearts with all the pleasures of life, can ever throw 
us into that violent despair, which follows in the 
train of the passions ? Do you fancy that the tears 
which, like the gentle dews of Heaven, fall from our 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 91 

eyes, resemble those tears of blood which sensuality- 
forces from yours ? We are sad, it is true, because 
we know that our souls are here in a state of exile, 
and we are consumed by an intense desire of behold- 
ing the well beloved abode of eternal peace and 
liberty. We are sad, because we feel that the 
science of this world can*never satisfy the insatiable 
longings of our spirit. We are sad, because the 
affection of no creature can ever fill the immeasura- 
ble depths of our being. Our intellect, enlightened 
and expanded by our Faith, teaches us to appreciate 
at their just value, the honors and pleasures of that 
world in which you find your only consolation. We 
cannot retain that power of illusion which sometimes 
lulls you to sleep upon the. very brink of the abyss. 
We can never lean on the broken reed of human 
affeetions, because we have too deeply penetrated 
into the mysteries of human nature ; but we have a 
support and a hope which render endurable that 
utter loneliness of heart and mind, which we must 
all bear during life. However, if we cannot find on 
earth a happiness which belongs only to Heaven, at 
least we are of all the exiled creatures in this world, 
the least suffering and despairing. The melancholy 
of sensual souls is like that of the dark days of win- 
ter, whose clouds are impenetrable to the sunbeams. 
Owr's is like those lovely autumn days, when the 



92 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

first shadows of the rainy season are mingled with 
the last glories of departing summer. We are en- 
veloped, as well as you, in the night of this world, 
which surrounds and oppresses us ; but while you 
bend your disconsolate brows towards the earth, we 
raise our eyes to Heaven, to catch the first rays of 
that light which is never to be extinguished. 



CHAPTER III. 



ANARCHY OF THE HEART. 



Overflowing sensibilities, which are wasted in the Desert ! — (Sainte- 
Beuve.) 



There is something rigid and severe in the exte- 
rior forms of the Gospel, which gives offence to 
feeble minds. Its maxims of self-sacrifice and ab- 
negation, and that cross which we must bear, are 
apparently sad and oppressive. Does it not seem 
as if Christ had no desire of alluring human nature, 
nor of winning conviction by gilded promises ? It 
is the character of the true religion to represent 
things as they are, and to impose, without shrinking 
or tergiversation, the serious law of necessary du- 
ties. Christianity therein differs from all other sys- 
tems : it enunciates obligations before rights. How- 
ever, we must not think it has done nothing for the 
happiness of man, even during his fleeting days on 
earth. There is so sweet and calm a feeling in the 
fulfilment of duty ; there is a peace so true and last- 
ing, in passions overcome, that Christ could say with 



94 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

truth, even after all the severe requisitions of the 
law : "My yoke is sweet, and my burden light." 

The Rationalists, on the contrary, come to us with 
both hands full of an assured felicity. They paint 
with bitter disdain the mournful austerity of the 
Gospel ;* they announce to us finally, those lovely 
days beaming with that sweet happiness after which 



* M. Eugene Sue, in the " Wandering Jew," gives 
from the point of view indicated by us, a curious pic- 
ture of Catholic morality, which he places in th,e mouth 
of the priest Gabriel : " Blasphemy ! impiety ! ... to 
dare to sanctify sloth, isolation, distrust of everything, 
since there is nothing divine in the world, except holy 
labor, the holy love of our brethren, and holy commu- 
nion with them ! Sacrilege ! ! ! to dare to say that a 
Father of infinite goodness can rejoice in the pains of 
His children ! . . . Some few have seized upon the com- 
mon inheritance by cunning, or by force . . . and it is 
that which afflicts God. Ah yes! if He suffers, it is to 
see to what a demorable fate, innumerable masses of 
His creatures have devoted themselves, in order to sa- 
tisfy the cruel selfishness of a few. Thus oppressors in 
all ages and countries, daring to make God their accom- 
plice, have ever united in proclaiming in His name, this 
frightful maxim : — Man is born to suffer . . . his pangs 
and humiliations are agreeable to God . . . Yes, they 
have so declared : so that the more severe, humiliating, 
and painful, the condition of the creature whom they 
imposed upon, the more tears and blood were shed by 
the unfortunate being, the more, accordiug to these 
homicides, was the Lord pleased and glorified . . ." — 
(Eugene Sue, "Wandering Jew."') 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 95 

every mind and heart sighs. f How many young 
and inexperienced souls have we not seen, perilling 
their whole future in those dangerous paths, seduced 
by fleeting dreams which they pursue in vain, even 
to the grave ? You, as well as I, have seen poor 
erring souls throw off the restraints of the law, per- 
haps for ever, in order to listen in peace to the thou- 
sand desires, the thousand passions, which fiercely 
struggle in their hearts. I have sometimes followed 
with saddened gaze, joyful sailors embarking on the 
perfidious ocean. They only thought of the plea- 
sures of the voyage, of the novelties of distant 
countries, and of the gold they should bring home 
with them. — But the faithless waves, the hidden 



f We may find a very curious example of the high- 
sounding promises of Rationalism, in Henry Heine, 
''Germany, I." But this writer, fanatical as he is, 
would blush at the foolish promises and the scandalous 
lures, offered by the school of Fourier. The learned 
author of the " Manual of Modern History," brands 
with courageous eloquence those revolting eccentrici- 
ties : " Devotion, doubtless, is no vain word ; it exists 
now, as formerly, and we are convinced it will ever live 
in France; but it is because France will reject Fourier- 
ism. Fourier builds only upon an unbounded selfish- 
ness, and offers its most odious type, in the very ideal 
of his model society. Only imagine a society, where 
the only aim is the gratification of the passions ; where 
the number of inhabitants is reduced to six hundred to 
the square league, in order that the remainder may 



96 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

rocks, and Death, so fearful amid the tempest ! 
Thus have I often, in imagination, accompanied on 
the stormy waves of life, young hearts which, with 
a smile on the lips, made their entrance into the 
world. They too, only thought of crowning them- 
selves with roses, and of gaily passing those years 
called by the poet, fugitive : 

" Eheu ! fugaces, Posthume, Posthume, 
Labuntur anmV' — (Horace.) 

What would be their response, were I now per- 
mitted to arrest their rapid course, and ask them, 
what tbey have accomplished ; what truths they 
have acquired ; what services they have rendered to 
Humanity ; what virtues they have prepared for the 
dark days of old age ? 



more amply enjoy themselves; where the reason of all 
is only employed in refining pleasures ; where gluttony 
is a virtue, and where each one daily consumes a quan- 
tity of nourishment, equal to the twelfth part of his own 
weight' etc. . . . ; where two-thirds of the women are 
professed prostitutes, and where all have the like mo- 
rality, etc. . . . ; and where the most depraved tastes, 
in every species of passion, find full satisfaction ! Such 
is the ideal of Fourierism, such is the proposed realisa- 
tion of the Kingdom of God on Earth ! ! !" — (Ott, " Re- 
vue Nationale," Dec. 1847.) It would not be difficult 
to prove by numerous facts, that M. Ott ? s assertions are 
by no means exaggerated, but we can no more relate 
these shameful ideas, than dwell upon the excesses of 
Greco-Roman Paganism. (See Fourier, " (Euvres com- 
pletes.") 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 97 

Let the heart of man live on, in all its reckless 
independence, and soon will the spirit be destroyed. 
It is a vain and hollow dream, to believe that we can 
rule our hearts according to our will, like fragile 
reeds yielding to the lightest pressure. Sensibility 
is so powerful in our moral organisation, that it seizes 
on and crushes us, if we give it a moment's freedom. 
The abyss lures us. The young man, at the begin- 
ning of life, thinks he may abandon himself to plea- 
sure, and at the same time preserve the indepen- 
dence of his heart and mind ; but soon he perceives 
with discouragement that his enfeebled understand- 
ing is a mere slave, and has ceased to rule. He 
then finds new ideas continually entering his mind ; 
he yields, at first through weakness, but at length 
systematically and as if through conviction. St. 
Augustine admirably describes the fatal progress 
which young minds rapidly make in the pathways of 
evil : 

u What I wished, what I desired, was to love and 
to be loved, I could not be satisfied with friendship ; 
my heart asked for more. There arose from the 
depths of my concupiscence I know not what vapors 
and mists of youth, which troubled my whole soul, 
and made me confound the blindness of passion, 
with the pure happiness of affection Then mar- 
riage should have been conceded, as a dike to the 



98 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

torrent of my age ; but my father was much more 
troubled concerning my eloquence, than my morals ; 
my success as a rhetorician, than my conduct as a 
young man. ... In vain did my mother dissuade me 
from sin ; her words seemed to me those of a simple 
woman, and I blushed to obey. More; I was 
ashamed among my comrades of being less vicious 
than they ; and when I heard them boast of their 
excesses, and saw them proud and applauded in pro- 
portion to their libertinism, I too, hastened to sin, 
less through pleasure than vanity. Ordinarily, cen- 
sure follows vice ; I sought vice to avoid censure ; 
and as at every cost I wished to equal my comrades, 
I even feigned sins which I had not committed, in 
order to gain a little of their pernicious esteem. . ." * 

But the evil does not end there ; it continually 
increases, like an eating and destroying cancer. 
We feel here under the necessity of quoting an orator 
who has painted the frightful degradation of a cor- 
rupt heart, with a depth and eloquence, in my 
opinion, never equalled : 

" The sense of which I speak," says Father La- 
cordaire, "is not only rebellious, but depraved. I 
call that sense depraved, which does not confine itself 
to its true functions, but which acts through an in- 



* Augustine, " Confessions," Book II, chap. 2 and 3 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 99 

stinct of egotism, foreign to any end. It is evident 
that such a condition must arise from a corruption of 
the natural order, because nature always works for 
a just, determinate, and efficacious purpose. Now, 
the sense of which I speak, is not concerned for any 
end ; its end is altogether foreign to it. What it 
seeks is itself, is a satisfaction independent of any 
good effect, whose utility and sanctity might justify 
it. While all the senses work in harmony with life, 
even when they misuse it; while sleep refreshes, 
nourishment strengthens, and our ears hear the 
words spoken by the voice ; in short, while all our 
other senses, even in their excesses, accomplish 
something real, that one continually conspires 
against our life. It consumes, without fruit, our 
most precious organs, and destroys, without any re- 
sult, our most admirable faculties. Have you not 
met men, who, in the bloom of life, scarcely honored 
yet by the signs of manhood, already bear the marks 
of time ; who, degenerate before having reached 
the perfection of their being, their foreheads fur- 
rowed by untimely wrinkles, and their lips incapable 
of expressing goodness, drag on a decrepit existence, 
even in the fairest days of youth ? What has caused 
this living death ? What has stricken this youth ? 
What has deprived him of the freshness of his years ? 
What has graven centuries of shame upon his face ? 



100 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

» 

Is it not that sense, the enemy to human life ? The 
victim of his own depravity, the unhappy one has 
lived alone, only aspiring to selfish agitations, to 
those fearful pulsations from which man and Heaven 
turn their eyes ; and now behold him ! Drunk with 
the wine of death, and followed by contempt, he 
bears his body to the tomb, where his vices will sleep 
with him, and dishonor his ashes to the end of time. 
Ah ! if that be not a depraved sense, what name 
shall we give to it ? A still more bitter name ; for 
I add, that it is an abject sense. It is an abject 
sense, because it kills the heart, and substitutes 
the excitement of the blood, for the emotions of the 
soul. During my life, I have seen many young men, 
and I assure you, I have never found tenderness of 
heart in a dissolute young man ; I have never found 
any loving souls but those that were either ignorant 
of, or engaged in a constant struggle with, evil. 
Indeed, once habituated to violent emotions, how 
can the heart, that delicate plant, nourished by a 
few drops of dew falling from Heaven, which the 
lightest breezes disturb, which can be happy for days 
through the remembrance of a word, a look, a little 
encouragement given by the lips of a mother, or the 
pressure of a friendly hand ; the heart, whose beat- 
ing is so calm in a true nature, almost insensible, 
because of its very sensibility, and fearing lest a 



THE TOUCHSTONE OP CHARACTER. 101 

single drop of love might shatter it, had God made 
it less capricious, — how, I say, can the heart oppose 
its gentle and fragile enjoyment, to the gross and 
exaggerated pleasures of the depraved sense. The 
one is selfish, the other generous : one lives for it- 
self, the other, out of itself: of two tendencies, one 
must prevail : if the depraved sense conquer, the 
heart withers little by little, it can no longer feel the 
delight of simple joys ; it lives no more for others, 
and ends by beating only that the blood may circu- 
late, and to mark the flight of that shameful time 
whose progress is hastened by debauch. But what 
can be more abject than to destroy the heart of a 
man within him ? What is left him if his heart be 
dead ? Yet does the depraved sense still more ; the 
effects of no vice as of no virtue can be confined to 
a single individual ; both have in society their action 
and reaction ; and in this view, the depraved sense 
is the disgrace and ruin of the world."* 

The excesses of the passions cause then a pro- 
found deterioration of the whole spiritual being, 
which continually increases as the grosser affections 
acquire the ascendency. The remembrance of Grod, 
which to frail and dependent beings should be so 



* Lacordaire, "Conferences de Notre-Dame," II, 
39-42. 



102 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

natural, becomes only a strange and importunate 
idea. 

" As this conduct," as Bourdaloue admirably re- 
marks, " cannot harmonise with the knowledge of a 
God (for, how can we know God and be ignorant of 
what will offend Him) , so, from forgetfulness of him- 
self and from ignorance of his sin, the sensual man 
falls into ignorance and forgetfulness of God ; behold 
the depth of the abyss wherein impurity plunges 
him. 

" Thence is it, said the learned Pico of Miran- 
dola, that in all times, Atheists have been notorious 
as men corrupted by carnal pleasures ; Atheism, as 
that great man remarks, not being the cause of im- 
purity, but impurity being the usual course which 
leads to Atheism. Thence is it that the impure by 
profession, are ordinarily corrupt and libertine in 
matters of belief; they are easily prejudiced against 
religion, they love to dispute it, to find difficulties, 
and care not to seek the solutions ; scarcely can even 
a corrupt and worldly woman be found, who does 
not pique herself upon the strength of her mind, 
and of her reasonings on the truths of Christianity. 
Why ? Because she would willingly persuade her- 
self, by reasoning, that there is no God, according 
to that fine saying of St. Augustine's, that none 
doubt the existence of God, save those to whom such 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 103 

an existence would be very inexpedient. Thence 
is it, that the progress of impiety always follows 
that of vice 5 and that, on the other hand, the return 
from impiety to faith, rarely commences in a soul, 
but by the return from vice to virtue, that is to say, 
when the flame of impure desires is extinguished. 
The reason of all this is very simple ; for the sen- 
sual man, finding it impossible to believe and at the 
same time to satisfy himself, the vision of a God 
troubling him amid his pleasures, and those plea- 
sures being constantly reproved by the vision of a 
Grod, he finally concludes to renounce the one, in 
order to continue in possession of the other, and no 
longer to believe in that God, # whom he regards as 
the irreconcilable enemy of his pleasures and ex- 
cesses."* 

The soul becomes hardened in the midst of this 
misery and shame, and turns away her eyes from 
Heaven, as if that sweet and consoling thought had 
become baneful and odious. Filled with antipathy 
for all that recalls eternity, she falls into a scepti- 
cism, sometimes assumed, but always profound. 
Grod is still named, but always with a secret irony. 
The sensualist, ruled by his passions, becomes incre- 
dulous, not only with regard to revealed religion, 



* Bourdaloue, " Lent," Sermon on Impurity. 



104 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

but also generally, with respect to (what is called) 
natural religion. He would think himself truly un- 
wise in accepting the vain teachings of philosophers, 
when he rejects those of the Gospel. He sees no 
reason for receiving laws from Kant or Hegel, since 
he refuses those of Jesus Christ. Does he not ex- 
press great contempt for those sages, who, through 
a foolish pride, renounce the gratifications of the 
present life, without ever striving for the eternal? 
Should Heaven blast him with lightning, he, like 
Don Juan, would defy it even in dying. He regards 
all that passes the bounds of his senses as a vain 
chimera ; he considers all that does not lead to plea- 
sure as a cheat. 

Perhaps you mafy think I exaggerate. Listen 
then : " Joseph Delorme then took a lodging in his 
old quarter, and confining himself more closely than 
ever, only went out after nightfall. Then did he 
deliberately begin and pursue, without relaxation, 
his slow but sure suicide ; nothing but alternate fits 
of prostration and frenzy, accompanied from time 
to time by cries or sighs ; no more regular and se- 
rious study; only, occasionally, a short indulgence 
in that exciting reading, which melts or burns the 
soul. 

" At this time, reason had lost all control over the 
mind of the unhappy Joseph. To use the very ex- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 105 

pressions of his journal, the bare rock to which he 
had so long clung, had given way beneath his grasp, 
and had left him on the shifting sands, at the mercy 
of the waves. No precept of life, no principle 

OF MORALITY, REMAINED IN THIS SOUL, except a few 

broken fragments scattered here and there, which 
crumbled at his touch. At least, had reason in for- 
saking him delivered him hopelessly up to the wan- 
derings of a frenzied sensibility, he might have been 
stunned by the violence of real insanity, and the 
intoxication of delirium have spared him the know- 
ledge of the wounds inflicted by his fall ; but it 
seemed as if a capricious executioner had bound 
the body of his victim with a cord, which occasion- 
ally held him back, so that he' might only fall by 
degrees. His extinct reason hovered round him 
like a phantom, and accompanied him to the abyss, 
upon which it threw a dismal glare. This is what 
he himself, with fearful energy, called: 4 To be 
drowned with the lantern round one's neck.' In a 
word, Joseph's soul presented thenceforth only an 
inconceivable chaos, where monstrous imaginations, 
vivid memories, wicked fancies, great thoughts in 
ruins, wise foresights followed by foolish actions, 
and emotions of piety following blasphemy, sported 
and jostled each other on a background of despair."* 



* See Sainte-Beuve, " Poems, 5 ' Life of Joseph Delorme. 



106 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Neither does the author of the Orkntalts dissimu- 
late the profound cause of the scepticism of the 
children of the present age : 
" sweet and noble Lady, mourn our age ! 

A picture dark presents the heart of man. 

A serpent in the water's source we scan, 
And Doubt, its war within our souls, doth wage. 

A mocking smile thy lips doth never part, 

O'er any grief that in our spirit's seen j 

thou, who livst retired and serene, 
In mind a man, but woman through thy heart. 

If thou, the Muse, shouldst ask from me, the Poet, 
Whence comes the dream that saddens all my days ; — 
That darkens o'er my brow; and why always, 

Like tossing branches, is my soul unquiet % 

Why seek I from the murmuring winds, or wild 
Or soft, an answer : and before the break 
Of earliest dawn all unrefreshed I wake, 

Before the birds, or e'en the happy child } 

And when the veil of darkness hath been rent, 
Why wander I, as one pursued by fate, 
Within the vale, and sadly contemplate 

The flowery turf, or heaven star-besprent % 

I'd tell thee, that within me still abides 
A foe, pale Doubt, which drives me to the glade, 
A spectre blind and deaf, compound of shade 

And light, that all, at once half shows, half hides. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 107 

I'd tell thee that I question evermore, 

An instinct stammering, prisoned in the sense, 
Besieging faith, with doubts that will not hence ; 

The sneering mind, so near the weeping heart. 

Thou hearest oft the murm'ring word half spoken, 
And, like a starving beggar, old and poor, 
Who dreams, low bowed, beside the closed door, 

I seem as waiting one who ne'er will open. 

Doubt ! in lines of flame, on Nature's scroll 
I see thee traced, upon the very sky 
That, with its mystic blue, unto the eye 

Transparent seems, impervious to the soul. 

To Passion's sons, is Doubt the special ill, 
We. ne'er can hope to reach thy calm sublime, 
Whose life-barks, launched at an evil time, 

On revolutions' waves are tossing still. 

Those hideous vipers, superstitions, swarm 
Beneath our brows, where every germ is dead. 
We bear within our hearts the corpse decayed 

Of Faith, that in our fathers lived so warm."* 

In G-ermany, the sentimental theory excited pas- 
sions still more profound, and a furious hatred of 
truth and virtue, which still threatens the civilised 
world with the most frightful consequences (1847) : 

" Speak to us no more," cries Hermann Putt- 
mann, one of those fiery apostles of pleasure, " of 



* Victor Hugo, " Chants du Crepuscule." 



10S THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

the wrath of God, of our own abasement, nor of 
anything thereto resembling. Let us holily glorify 
man alone ; we desire nothing beyond him, no other 
life more glorious. 

" Let liberty triumph ! Human liberty alone, 
terrestrial, filled with life. Bo not suffer a false 
imagination^ degrade you, by despoiling you of the 
blessings of earth. 

" Bend your knees no longer before phantoms ; 
creep no more into sombre churches, ye, with 
serene brows and noble souls ! Why will you so 
cruelly torment yourselves ? 

" Truly is this fear, this trembling before a life 
we shall never live, a torment. A real torture is 
this continual aspiration towards a frenzy of peni- 
tence, impossible to be attained. 

" Truly ignominious is this languishing desire for 
Heaven , this stupid contempt for the world, this fas- 
cination with death. . . . 

" There is nothing beyond ourselves. Let us open 
our hearts. There will we find the Paradise for 
which we were born : happiness is, to live. Who is 
there bold enough to abandon himself to death ?" 

Louis Feuerbach is still more gross and audacious 
when he treats of God, and of the Christian Reve- 
lation. In the preface to his Essence of Christian- 
ity, he does not fear to call Christian piety, an incu- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 109 

m 

rahle syphilis of bigots ; elsewhere, an inexhaustible 
mine of lies, impostures, illusions, and insanity. The 
existence of the Sovereign Being inspires him with 
the following execrable sarcasm : 

" Is he male or female, or perhaps hermaphrodite?" 
In his work entitled, On Death and Immortality, 
he celebrates in high-sounding verses, the great -and 
all-powerful negation. 

This fanatical school has its poets ; and pray Hea- 
ven we be not soon called upon to groan beneath the 
yoke of its politicians ! Among the apostles of ne- 
gation we must not, above all, forget Herwegh. We 
will quote some lines of his, translated by Count 
d'Horrer. Here is a distich addressed to youth : 
"Believe not and know not, but doubt and doubt ever, 
Reject Faith and Hope, though thy heart-strings should 
sever." 

Elsewhere he says : 

" What if there be a God, and what if none ? 
What care I for this God, when life is done % 
No clearness here responds to my desires, 
And naught is true, but pleasure's glowing fires." 

The German poet only repeats in his Epicurean 
verses, what the philosophers of the same school no 
less audaciously teach. After this can we be aston- 
ished to hear William Marr proclaim, "that the 
dogmas of the existence of a Grod and the immor- 



110 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

tality of the soul, are only old wives tales, rejected 
by reason with scorn ?" As a consequence to such 
principles, he cries out with savage frenzy: " I de- 
sire great vices, bloody, colossal crimes. When shall I 
cease to see this trivial morality, this tiresome virtue ?" 

Did not one of the proconsuls of Swiss radicalism 
most audaciously say that, " The aristocracy of mo- 
rality must be levelled /" 

"M. Carl G-run," says M. Anatole de Gallier, 
" is a representative of the extreme party, with all 
the consequences of their opinions ; were it possi- 
ble, he even outdoes them. He rejects with disdain 
all community of principles with the innovators of 
France and England, still imbued with religious and 
theological prejudices, and who, by a vicious circle, 
would infallibly lead us back to that which we already 
know, to that which we no longer need. (Certainly 
the accusation is not wanting in originality : Fou- 
rier, Robert Owen, and Saint-Simon become Capu- 
chins' and Jesuits !) As for him, he does not stop 
half way, but strikes into the very quick, and de- 
stroys all the veils behind which might be hidden 
any appearance of a Divine Being. He applauds 
the efforts towards negation of the Baron d'Hol- 
bach ; he goes into the blind-alley of Theism, in 
search of the idea, and when found, he resolutely 
drives it out. Grod owes his name and attributes to 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER, 111 

the human conscience. He is nothing but the reli- 
gious and philosophical ideal which we bear within 
us, and which we so much the more readily compre- 
hend, that it is created by us of our proper substance. 
Grod once destroyed, we are only half-way, the 
ground slides beneath our feet, and repose is impos- 
sible. We must make one more sacrifice to inexo- 
rable logic : that of morality, that superannuated and 
troublesome divinity. And then may the metaphy- 
sician unhesitatingly declare, that evil is only the de- 
velopment of human activity, and finally, that life, 
icith its sensual enjoyments, is the greatest of all bles- 
sings." 

We penned these lines before the revolution of 
February, 1847. Since then, have not all the fol- 
lies of G-erman materialism been surpassed, even in 
France ? 

You see that if the plant be torn from the soil of 
its birth, furnished for its nourishment by Provi- 
dence itself, it droops, and must perish when remo- 
ved from its native skies. You cannot transplant 
the heather of the mountain to the plain ; it would 
soon die. Man too must live in the atmosphere 
created for him by the Eternal ; elsewhere, he de- 
generates, day by day. He was made for the pure 
and holy practice of duty ; without it he cannot live 
his true life of intelligence and virtue. Without 



112 THE TOUCHSTONE OP CHARACTER. 

this influence, lie feels developing within him an 
infinity of contemptible inclinations, for which he 
ought to blush. He must have gold, not for the 
sake of the gold itself, but to increase the circle of 
his passions. He would like to have the power of 
buying souls and consciences, in order that he might 
govern them according to the will of his caprices. 

It would give him such delight to hold within his 
hands a lever, which might lift the Earth. But 
should gold be wanting, perfidy will not always fail. 
He would be glad to resemble, through cunning, 
those great souls, who hold themselves above the 
vulgar prejudice, called friendship. There are, I 
believe, but few among corrupt souls, to whom these 
sacred bonds form any barrier. In almost all minds, 
pleasure produces selfishness ; and selfishness, the 
most egregious errors. 

No one can be more frank on this- point than 
Alexander Dumas in his "Antony" : — 

" Adele. But with such ideas, you believe nei- 
ther in friendship, nor . . . 

" The Viscountess. "Well ! nor in love. 

"Antony. In love ! yes ... in friendship, no . 
. . . That is a spurious feeling, of which nature has 
no need, a convention of sQciety, adopted by the 
heart through egotism, wherein the soul is constantly 
cheated by the mind, and which is destroyed by the 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 113 

first glance of a woman, or the smile of a Prince." 
Bourdaloue well foresaw these fatal consequences 
when he said : 

" Is it not truly surprising, to see how low man 
may be debased by this sin ? For there is no inte- 
rest he will not sacrifice, no honor he will not tram- 
ple on, no dignity he will not prostitute, no fortune 
he will not risk, no friendship he will not violate, no 
reputation he will not peril, no ministry he will not 
profane, and no duties he will not neglect, in order 
to satisfy his passion. A father forgets his duty to 
his children, caring not whether he ruin them by 
his orgies ; a judge, his duty to the public, making 
no scruples in sacrificing justice to his pleasures ; a 
friend, his duty to his friend, thinking nothing of 
abusing his access into any house that he may dis- 
honor it ; a priest, his duty to Jesus Christ, fearing 
not to scandalise his sacred ministry by abominable 
deeds ; a wife, what she owes to her husband, disre- 
garding the faith she has sworn to him ; a maiden, 
her duties to herself, no longer blushing at having 
lost her most beautiful ornament, and having ren- 
dered herself an object of scorn. If in each of 
these stations in life, men were to make this reflec- 
tion : ' Who am I, and in what am I about to en- 
gage ?' there is no one, however abandoned to the 
violence of his desires, that -human reasons alone 

9 



114 THfi TOUCHSTONE Of CHARACTER. 

would not be sufficient to restrain. But their eyes 
are bandaged ; and while they are ruled by this pas- 
sion, they know not what they are, nor what they 
are not, because the demon of impurity has blinded 
them, and deprived them of the most necessary of 
all visions, which is the vision of ourselves." — 
(Bourdaloue, Lent, Sermon on Impurity.) 

All the salutary laws which still restrain us, in 
societies which have remained almost Christian, 
finally end by deeply irritating tkose erring souls. 
I cannot think there are many in that condition, 
who truly desire a good social order.* Do they not 
call all authority, tyranny, all obligations, slavery, 
and all institutions, prejudices ? 

Open M. Alexandre Dumas' Antony, and what 
read you there ? 

"Adele. Antony, the world has its laws, and 
society, its requirements . . . etc. 

a An tony. And why should I accept them ? . 
Not one of those who made them can boast of having 
spared me a pain, or of having rendered me a single 
service ; no, thank Heaven, I have received nothing 



* Rosmini has given an excellent and profound reason 
for it : " We can love no order, when we hate the order 
which should reign within us." — (Rosmini- Serbati, 
" Essai sur l'Esperance," Andre's translation, book I, 
§ XVIII.) 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 115 

from them but injustice, and owe them nothing but 
hate . . . I should hate myself, were a man to force me 
to love him.'''' 

Afterwards when describing the violence of his 
love for Madame d'Hervey, who represents to him 
the solemn vows made at the holy altar, Antony ex- 
claims : 

" Oh ! I must have either hatred or love,* Adele ! 
I will have one or the other ... If you desired an 
ordinary love, you should have been loved by a 
happy man ! Duties and virtue ! vain words ... A 
murder would made you a widow ... I can commit 
that murder ; little care Lwhether my blood be shed 
by my own hand or by that of the executioner . . , 
It will bring reproach on no one, and the ground 
alone will be stained by it . . . Adele ... I long for 
you, I must have you . . . — There is a crime be~ 
tween us . . . — So be it, I will commit it !" 

I do not know that the independence of the heart 
produces uniformly, all these effects in corrupted 



* It is easy to show that what Antony calls love, is 
nothing but a selfish and reckless madness. He him- 
self eonfesses as much afterwards to Adele, who com- 
plains of the sufferings he has caused her : 

u Antony. Oh ! be silent, be silent ! Thou didst 
fly . . . T'was I pursued thee ; I had no pity on thy 
tears ; no remorse for thy plaints ; I have ruined thee, 
I am a wretch and a villain ; I have dishonored thee, 
and can make no reparation." 



116 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

souls. There are, doubtless, minds less consistent^ 
less energetic and decided, who, through a kind of 
impotence, are arrested at the first steps into evil, 
and who live and die amid mere vulgar brutality. 
But in truly living organisations, passion never stops 
there- It hates really and deeply all religious or 
moral truth, which might restrain and confine it. 

" There comes a time," says the most celebrated 
thinker of the present day in Italy, " when the ob- 
stinate attachment to an infamous pleasure of the 
senses or of pride, and the fantastical hope of find- 
ing a means to justify his passions, develop in such 
a manner as to absorb the whole man. 

" From that fatal moment he no longer knows, 
sees, or loves aught, save those shameful gratifica- 
tions, and that which relates to, or resembles them. 

" He desires to indulge in them with his whole 
strength, and envies the enjoyments of others : 
thence jealousy, degrading excesses, hatred, and in 
short, total disorder. 

" So soon as these habits have established their 
reign within the heart of man, they keep a vigilant 
watch that no elevated or spiritual thought enter 
their domain. For, if any principle connected with 
spiritual things, should find its way into the soul, it 
becomes, through the power of conscience, a scourge 
to all the guilty passions. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 11*7 

" It is then necessary that this decided love of 
vice, which rules and tyrannises over souls, should 
banish, as a mortal enemy, all that speaks of virtue. 
He who has a deep and sore ulcer, is so sensitive in 
the part affected by the disease, that a breath may 
occasion screams, and the simple contact of his gar- 
ments, make him shudder. Now, such is the effect 
of a holy maxim on the lacerated soul of the unfor- 
tunate who seeks happiness in pleasure ; with this 
difference however, that there is infinitely more en- 
ergy in the faculties of the spirit, than in those of 
the body, already so strong. . . . 

" That fury which is kindled in the soul of the 
wicked, when they hear a precept opposed to the 
affections which enslave them, is a singular fact, and 
one well worthy of claiming the attention of the 
philosopher, who makes a study of the human heart. 
For if it be understood, and its character well de- 
fined, there are many historical accounts which be- 
come entirely credible, however fabulous they may 
have before appeared. 

u If in fact the strength of their powers of feel- 
ing be such as we have stated, their grief and rage 
will be the greater, in proportion as the truth pre- 
sented, knocking at the gates of their soul, be clear 
and undeniable, and possessing consequently more 
force. Indignation and grief will reach their height, 

9* 



118 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

when the truth is as clear as it can possibly be 
made." — (Rosmini, Essai sur PJEsperance, book I, 
§ XXVI.) 

It is Tain to hope that these rebellious spirits will 
be governed by philanthropic wisdom, or by pedan- 
tic babbling. They will always comprehend that, 
having broken with Heaven, they are amenable to 
no power. The pretended defenders of society can 
never bind by their weak laws, those whom the 
Church has failed in restraining (1S47). Thus see 
how many every day escape from their dominion, 
some by suicide, arid others by open rebellion ! The 
passions once unchained, no one can say where they 
will be arrested. G-entle words will not lull the lion 
to sleep. To unbridled hearts, there is a satisfac- 
tion in mere destruction. A pure and serene intel- 
ligence reposes in the midst of order, wisdom, and 
peace ; but the spirit which disdains virtue, delights 
in anarchy, as in its proper element. It seems as if 
the confusion were in harmony with the agitation 
which consumes it. Like Childe Harold, it would 
rejoice in dashing with the waves, in howling with 
the tempest, and in roaring as the thunder. Such 
is Byron ! 

" Whate'cr thou may'st be. Bvron. genius good 

Or ill. . ... 

. . thy dwelling is the darksome night, 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 119 

And horror, thy domain : the eagle, king 

Gf deserts, thus disdains the plain. Like thee. 

He seeks alone the steep and rugged cliffs, 

By Winter whitened, and by thunder riven, 

The sterile shores, where bleach the ocean's wrecks, 

Or fields all blackened by the battle's rage : 

And while the bird, which singeth e'en in grief, 

Upon the water's edge, amid the flowers, 

Her nest doth build, to Athos' giddy heights 

He sweeps, and hangs his eyrie o'er the abyss, 

Suspended from the mountain's side, and there, 

Along amid his victims' reeking limbs, 

The rocks still dripping with their blackening gore, 

He finds his pleasure in their cries of pain, 

And, cradled by the tempest, sleeps in joy. 

And thou, Byron, like this brigand bird, 
The saddest wailings of despair dost deem 
Thy sweetest harmonies ; a scenic play 
Ts evil unto thee, and man, thy victim. 
Thine eye, like Satan's, measured the abyss ; 
Thy soul, there plunging far from God and day, 
Hath bidden Hope eternally farewell ! 
And now, like him, thou reignest in deep darkness ; 
Thy genius, never dying, wildly swells 
In funeral songs ; it triumphs, and thy voice 
Attuned to modes infernal, chants the hymn 
Of glory, to the gloomy God of ill."* 



120 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Do you not find the same combats in the unquiet 
soul of Jean- Jaques ? Have wilder storms ever 
been witnessed ? What dark misanthropy ! What 
antipathy to the whole of society ! What disgust 
at civilisation ! It was only natural that the author 
of the Confessions, should be also that of the Dis- 
course on Inequality; that he should endeavor to 
overthrow that society which had so confined him. 
In such natures there is never any medium in pas- 
sion ; they are never arrested by those grains of 
sand, called by politicians, mountains. You labor 
in vain ; they will always require something, which 
may hold to them the place of devotion and virtue ; 
something, which may raise them above the stagna- 
ting level of a worldly life. Christianity fully un- 
derstood such natures, and had prepared for their 
occupation and satisfaction, boundless sacrifices and 
infinite love. Christianity made of those burning 
souls, Augustines, Jeromes, Loyolas, and Francis 
Xaviers. But you have desired neither sacrifices 
nor devotion.* You have preached to man the de- 
votion to his own happiness ; and now those spirits 



* " Man," as M. Saint- Marc Girardin admirably re- 
marks, " creates nothing, except through devotion and 
sacrifice." — (Saint- Marc Girardin, "Essais," la The- 
baide.) Now the present century has declared the de- 
votion of the Catholic Church unlawful. Hear how 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 121 

created for the highest and noblest destinies, turn 
against you that activity which consumes them. 
The fatal day that is to decide on the life and death 
of French society, may be near at hand (1847) ' 
But hear you not already ominous words resounding, 
and see you not swords and poignards flashing 
through the gloom ? 



the Rev. P. Lacordaire makes the men of our age speak, 
in his admirable " Memorial on the Re-establishment 
of the Preaching Friars" : " It is true, all that with 
which you reproach us, is the height of injustice, and 
tends undeniably to social disorganisation. But we 
are inimical to your religious doctrine : it is too power- 
ful for us to combat with equal arms. You draw from 
your faith such an entire abnegation of yourselves, that 
we, men of the world, married, ambitious, incapable of 
any future, because we are stifled by the present, we 
cannot dispute the vantage ground with you. How- 
ever since we hate, we must conquer you. We will 
not use fire and sword against you ; but by law, we 
will place you outside the law ; we will cause your de- 
votion to be regarded as a dangerous privilege, from 
which the State must be freed by ostracism ; you shall 
be without liberty, because by your virtues you are be- 
yond equality." — (Lacordaire, "Memorial," in the 
"Life of St. Dominic," 29.) 



CHAPTER IV. 



SENSUALITY AT THE TRIBUNAL OF THE 
PASSIONS. 



An imaginary and idolized good is decked by the fancy with as 

MANY EMBELLISHMENTS AS THE OBJECT OF LOVE. — (Eosmini.) 



In the reflections we have just made, there is 
more than one thought worthy of the profound con- 
sideration of serious minds. That vice to which 
Christianity with great philosophical truth has given 
the name of impurity, the poets call love. The mo- 
ralists of the nineteenth century, much more indul- 
gent to certain passions than we ought to be, have 
for some excesses a peculiar language, and a distinct 
set of ideas. The present epoch, which is entirely 
imaginative, is deeply penetrated, with regard to 
this subject, by the spirit of pagan poetry. Has 
not an attempt been made, to consider this love as 
the source of all the great movements of the soul ? 
Has it not been regarded as a true revelation of the 
Holy and the Beautiful ? Do we not daily hear 
that it is love which preserves devotion with self- 
sacrifice within our hearts ? Many are tormented 






TttE TOUCHStONE OF CHARACTER. 123 

by the fear of seeing man's nature maimed, as soon 
as any attempt is made to direct the tumultuous 
feelings which struggle in the depths of his being. 
Mysticism is accused of launching an anathema 
against human nature, and of uprooting, with a cruel 
and unrelenting hand, those sentiments which should 
win the respect of all. 

These apologies are not new ; they have all been 
made before, and during the most distinguished pe- 
riods of Catholicity : 

" Man," says Bourdaloue, "will no longer regard 
his passion except as a pardonable weakness, inci- 
dent to humanity ; he will no longer feel any re- 
morse, he will consider it as a mere gallantry, as a 
subject for self-gratulation, applause, and triumph : 
for, as William of Paris remarks in his admirable 
treatise on this matter, such is the progress of im- 
purity. But could it ever have been believed, had 
it not been proved by the depravity of the age, that 
there are men in the world, yes, in the Christian 
world, sufficiently perverted to call a crime of such 
magnitude by the simple name of gallantry ? Had 
pagans and idolators so expressed themselves, it 
would scandalise our religion to hold such language 
in imitation of their example. But the most disso- 
lute among the pagans and idolators, had on this 
point more modesty than we : we see men professing 



124 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

faith in the Grospel, and yet keeping no measure, 
without decency or modesty in their expressions, 
placing amid their conquests the most criminal con- 
nections, and boasting openly of their deeds, fre- 
quently even of what they have not done : Ah ! my 
brethren, said St. Chrysostom, it is a blindness worse 
than that of the demons. But what shall we say of 
Christian women who accustom themselves to similar 
discourses, regard them as a pastime and diversion, 
love their raillery and equivoque, take pleasure in 
understanding them, or show only a false repugnance 
with an air which, far from putting an end to license, 
excites, and renders it more bold ?" — (Bourdaloue, 
Lent, Sermon on Impurity.) 

" Does not even immodesty," adds Bossuet, " that 
is to say, shame itself, called brutality when it runs 
into open debauch, walk with upright head, when 
covered with a slight veil of fidelity, discretion, 
mildness, and perseverance ? Does it not seem 
worthy of heroes ? Does it not lose its very name 
of immodesty, to take that of gallantry ; and have 
we not seen the polite world treat those "who have 
not entered into such liasons, as savages and rustics ? 
It is then true, Christians, that the least mixture of 
false virtue can reconcile honor with vice. And 
this does not require much effort ; the least mixture 
suffices, the lightest coloring of deceptive and hypo- 



THE TOUCHSTONE. OF CHARACTER. 125 

critical virtue imposes on the eyes of the world. 
They who are no connoisseurs in precious stones, 
are duped and cheated by the least glare ; and the 
world is so little acquainted with real virtue, that it 
is often dazzled by its mere appearance. Thence is 
it, that among men there is rarely question of avoid- 
ing vice ; the onlv effort is, to find specious names, 
and honorable virtues." — (Bossuet, Lent, Sermon 
on Honor.) 

But the religion of Christ, which is widely severed 
from pagan impurities, will eternally oppose every 
passionate tendency which might overrule the holy 
law of duty. However, when we examine Christian 
principles closely and seriously, they agree wonder- 
fully, in my opinion, with the results of a sound 
philosophy. Whence is the poetical and ideal gran- 
deur which has been lent to sensuality ? May not 
the other vices also claim their share ? Alas ! poetry 
is but too often the echo of an impassioned soul, and 
it is more easy to embellish frailty, than to overcome 
it ! Poor human nature ! always ready to crown its 
chains with roses, to bend before the idol, and to 
die for it ! Do you not find that a sanguinary am- 
bition has also its grand and poetical aspect ? You 
know well that the human race forgets all the iniqui- 
ties of pride, all the offences of despotism, all the 
blood drawn from its veins, and suffers itself to be 

10 



126 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

dazzled by the glory of battles. No passion is too 
mean or miserable to become heroic and sublime, in 
dramas,* or romances. Thus, in Lelia, is Tren- 
mor, the gamester, transformed into an heroic per- 
sonage : " Trenmor," as M. de Milly remarks, " is 
the gentleman of the book, the great man, the man 
of power." — (A. de Milly, Revue des Romans, I; 
George Sand, Lelia. ) In the Fere Goriot, a daring 
villain makes the most open pretensions to greatness 
and deep wisdom. He attempts to crush vulgar 
ideas, by the weight of his logic and experience. He 
resembles, in some respects, the l Trenmor' of Lelia, 
the 'Brulart' of Atar-Gall, and the ' Tsaffie' of 
The Salamander. Listen to Vautrin ! "Do you 
know how men make their way in the world ? By 
brilliancy of genius, or by dexterity of corruption. 
This mass of men must be entered as a cannon ball, 
or we must creep among them like the plague. 
Honesty is good for nothing ; men bend beneath the 
power of genius, they hate and endeavor to calum- 
niate it, because it takes without sharing ; but they 
yeild it to if it perseveres ! In short, they adore 
genius on their knees, or else trample it in the mire. 



* We will return to the consideration of this point, 
when we examine the question of scenic representa- 
tions, in a book entitled, Distractions and Prejudices of 
the World. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 127 

Corruption abounds, because talent is rare. Thus 
corruption being the weapon of mediocrity which 
abounds, you will feel its point everywhere, etc. . . 
Thus is the honest man, the common enemy. But 
what do you take the honest man to be ? In Paris, 
the honest man is he who is quiet, and refuses to 
divide. I will say nothing of those poor Helots who 
everywhere labor without receiving any recompense, 
and whom I call, the holy confraternity of GocVs 
ragged laborers. Assuredly, you find virtue among 
them in the full bloom of its folly ; but you find 
there too its misery. I can see now the grimaces 
of those excellent people, should God play us the 
trick of absenting himself from the Last Judgment. 
" So if you desire a sudden fortune, you must 
either be already rich, or appear so. To become 
rich, we must venture a bold game ; otherwise we 
will be forced to play low, and your humble servant ! 
If in the hundred professions you may embrace, 
there be ten men who succeed rapidly, the public 
calls them, robbers. Draw your own conclusions ; 
such is life ! It is no more lovely than the kitchen, 
its perfume is as disagreeable, and if you put your 
fingers into the frying-pan, you will certainly soil 
your hands ; only learn how to wash your face well ; 
therein lies all the morality of your age. If I speak 
to you thus of the world, it has given me the right ; 



1*28 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

I know it. Do you think I blame it ? Not at all. 

It has always been thus, and the moralists will never 
change it. Man is not perfect, he is sometimes more 
and sometimes less of a hypocrite ; and then the 
simpletons say, he has no morality. I do not accuse 
the rich at the expense of the people ; man is the 
same whether high, low, or in the middle station. 
In every million of these reasoning herds, there are 
ten leaders who hold themselves above everything, 
even above the laws ; I am one. If you are a su- 
perior genius, you may go in a straight line, with 
your head upright." — (De Balzac, le Pere Goriot.) 
' Vautrin," says the spirited author of the Etudes, 
Critiques j "proves with geometrical precision, that 
in point of honesty, society is inferior to the prisons ; 
that thieves ought to shun the world for fear of form- 
ing evil connections, and courtesans, lest they should 
see things which might offend their modesty. Every 
rich man is a miser ; every great lady a degraded 
woman ; every author a trader in thought, and every 
statesman an intriguing politician. The world is 
composed of robbers, externally gilded, and of court- 
esans, perfumed with grace and fashion. Such is, 
w th a few brilliant but rare exceptions, the basis of 
the romances of M. de Balsac, which wit and talent 
render but the more dangerous. In this new course 
of morals, we find maxims such as these : { There 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 129 

are no principles, there are only events ; there are 
no laws, there are only circumstances, and the supe- 
rior man embraces them, to guide them;' finally this 
last : ' You will find in me those deep abysses, those 
vast concentrated feelings, that simpletons call vices.' 
Thus speaks Vautrin, the supereminent logician, the 
superior mind, the admirable and admired man. He 
rules and governs wherever he may be ; he does not 
always succeed, for what general is ever sure of 
winning all the battles he may fight ? Vautrin, the 
robber, who has a man put to death, in order to in- 
crease the wealth of an heiress, upon whose portion 
he is to have a large sum ; Vautrin, the murderer, 
who takes from time to time his winter quarters in 
the galleys, is simply a Napoleon, couched beneath 
his column, instead of standing upon it He is a 
galley-slave, because he was not an emperor." — 
(Nettement, Etudes critiques sur k feuilhton-rcman, 
I, Memoires du Diable.) 

Alas ! this disorder is far from being a novelty ! 
"If a slight shade of virtue be mingled with vice," 
says again Bossuet, " it may appear with honor in 
the world, without much attempt at concealment, 
and almost without any restraint. For instance, can 
anything be more unjust than to shed human blood 
for private injuries, and with one blow to tear a citi- 
zen from his country, a servant from his king, a 

10* 



130 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

child from the Church, and a soul, purchased with 
His own blood, from Grod ? And yet since men 
have associated an idea of virtue with these bloody 
deeds, honor has' so obstinately clung to them, that 
neither the anathemas of the Church, the severe 
laws and inflexible firmness of the Prince, nor the 
rigid justice of an avenging God, have been strong 
enough to succeed in effecting a separation. No- 
thing is more odious than extortion and peculation ; 
and yet, they who have employed them in order to 
indulge in expenses which seem to be liberality, but 
which, in reality, are most culpably unjust, almost 
efface the shame of their deeds, in the eyes of the 
Vulgar. Is there anything more detestable than ca- 
lumny, which ruins, without pity, the reputation of 
our neighbor ? But let it be called frankness of 
nature, and freedom in giving vent to thought ; or, 
without taking so much trouble, let it be wittily ex- 
pressed, so that it may amuse, for in the world the 
art of amusing is regarded as a great virtue, and 
little is thought of the poison of its arrows, provided 
they be skilfully thrown ; nor of the depth of the 
wounds, provided they be dexterously made." 

Truly, he must have a very mean estimate 01 
Christianity, who could think by such illusions to be 
able to delude that moral sense, which has always 
so wonderfully directed it. We might indeed say 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 131 

that it divines doctrines, and sees all their conse- 
quences and developments, before they become ma- 
nifest in the progress of history. Notwithstanding 
all the asseverations of the adversaries of Revela- 
tion, it will always appear as the calmest and most 
moderate judge, as soon as any question of the moral 
sentiments arises. This opinion is expressed by M. 
Cousin in his last work, where he speaks of the 
Church as the best judge in this matter. (See 
Cousin, Des Pensees de Pascal, Introduction, towards 
the end.) Rousseau went further: In a confiden- 
tial letter to one of his friends, the Church is spoken 
of as being quite as necessary in correcting the mis- 
takes of reason, as in restraining the extravagances 
of the heart : "I will say more, and declare that 
had I been born a Catholic, I would have remained 
a Catholic, well knowing that your Church puts a 
most salutary restraint on the wanderings of human 
reason, which finds neither bottom nor shore, when 
it strives to measure the depths of things ; and I am 
so convinced of the utility of this restraint, that I 
have imposed a similar one upon myself by pre- 
scribing for the remainder of my life, rules of faith, 
from which I do not permit myself to deviate." — 
(See Rousseau, Correspondence, dated 1774, Letter 
to M. Seguier de Saint-Brisson.) 

In the midst of the agitations of your philoso- 



132 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

pliers, by turns Atheists, Deists, and Pantheists, of 
your revolting apologies and of those sentimental 
idyls, which are mistaken for philosophy, religion 
alone preserves in its sacred arms, that true and sin- 
cere virtue, before which every head should bow. 

Napoleon regarded philosophy as powerless in 
preserving morals and social order, when separated 
from Revelation. We may judge of this by -the 
report presented by his order to the legislative body, 
in the session of April 5th, 1802 : " Laws only re- 
gulate certain actions, said he, religion embraces 
all; laws only arrest the arm, religion rules the 
heart; laws have relation to the citizen alone, while 
religion takes possession of the man. Morality, 
without religious dogmas, is like justice, without 
tribunals. The sages and philosophers of all ages, 
have unceasingly manifested a laudable desire of 
teaching only what is good and reasonable ; but have 
they been able to agree as to what is reasonable and 
good? Since the admirable Offices of the Roman 
Consul, have any discoveries been made in morals 
by the efforts of science alone ? Since the disser- 
tations of Plato, have the doubtful points in meta 
physics been less numerous? It is then the interest 
of human governments to protect religious institu- 
tions, sinae it is through their influence that con- 
science interposes in the affairs of life, and society 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 138 

finds itself placed under the powerful protection of 
the Author of nature. Scepticism isolates men as 
much as reason unites them ; it does not render 
them tolerant, but discontented ; it loosens all the 
bonds which attach them to one another; it fortifies 
self-love, and makes it degenerate into a sombre 
egotism ; it substitutes doubts for truths ; it arms 
the passions, and is powerless against error ; it in- 
spires pretensions without enlightening; it leads 
through license in opinion, to license in morals ; it 
withers hearts, breaks all ties, and dissolves soci- 
ety." M. Saisset himself, has ventured to speak 
energetically to M. Michelet, of the radical impo- 
tence of Rationalism, when called upon to govern 
nations, and preserve the morals of a people : 
"Philosophers," as he remarks with eloquent viva- 
city, "philosophers make books. What matters it 
to the people who cannot read them, and who, if 
they could, would not understand them ? Do we 
ever fancy Kant and Locke as preachers of morals 
and religion ? Besides, every universal want of 
human nature, requires a regular development. If 
this want be left to itself, it degenerates, and goes 
astray. Imagine the most enlightened nation in 
Europe, deprived of religious institutions, and be- 
hold immediately the way opened for every folly. 



134 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Sects will arise by thousands, the streets will be 
filled by prophets and messiahs; each head of a 
family will be the high priest of a different religion. 
If then philosophy will exercise the spiritual minis- 
try, she must struggle against this anarchy of indi- 
vidual opinions ; let her give men a symbol of faith, 
a catechism : most probably she will not read to the 
workmen the Meditations of Descartes, or the Theo- 
dicy of Leibnitz. Who then will compose the ne- 
cessary catechism ? A council of philosophers ? 
Who will delegate then* powers to these new doc- 
tors ? Even suppose it possible to do without a 
Church and a Pope, we must have a Gospel. What 
man would dare to say : " Behold the Gospel of 
Humanity ?" and were there one with pride enough 
to say it, could he find a single other to believe him ? 
If there be any one thing clear, evident to every 
sensible man, it is, that philosophy is incapable of 
discharging the spiritual ministry of modern soci- 
ety." — (Emile Saisset, Revue des Deux Mondes, 
1844, 403.) 

Let us now listen to an old editor in chief of the 
Constitutionnel, and author of Jerome Paturot, judg- 
ing with a just severity, the pretensions of romance 
writers to become moralists : " Under the influence 
of literary intoxication," says this rough censor, 
"romance writers, as well as philosophers, have 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 135 

dreamed of the palm of the Apostolate. Certainly 
it is a singular hallucination on the part of those 
minds who have misused everything, even talent, 
and who have degraded the profession of letters into 
the most vulgar trade. The romance writers of this 
age become moralists, and reformers of society ! In 
truth, the pretension is strange ; it is worthy of our 
times ! Before looking without, this literature would 
have done well to question itself, to search its own 
reins, to use a Biblical expression. After having 
been sceptical, mocking, satiated with everything, 
avaricious, and little scrupulous, all that was want- 
ing was to become hypocritical, to take up morality 
as a cloak, and social reform as a last expedient for 
coining money. This is but one more scandal, added 
to so many previous ones. He a moralist who has 
borrowed the language of Rabelais to poison the 
public with indecent tales and cynical recitals ! He 
a moralist who makes a jest of concluding on the 
success and impunity of crime ! A moralist he, 
who after having made a chaplet of adulterous wo- 
men, declaies that the fall is obligatory for all the 
daughters of Eve, and that chastity, the rare excep- 
tion, is a word which may always be translated into 
want ot opportunity ! Yes, all are moralists, mo- 
ralists of the same temper, who will return to virtue, 
if virtue find a ready sale, and succeed better than 



136 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

vice." — (Louis Reybaud, Etudes sur les reforma- 
teurs et les socialistes modernes.) These energetic 
words have not discouraged M. de Balzac The 
author of the Peau de Chagrin, the Grandeur et 
miser e des courtisanes, and of la Fille aux yeux a" 1 or, 
which M. de Milly rightly calls, infamous, both in 
conation and execution, has likewise dared to an- 
nounce himself as a serious moralist, and to declare 
that he has well merited of his country : " There 
are doubtless mothers, whom an education free from 
prejudices, has deprived of no womanly graces, 
while giving them solid instruction, without the 
least pedantry. Will they place these lessons be- 
fore the eyes of their daughters ? The author has 
ventured to hope it. He has flattered himself, that 
Q-ood minds will not reproach him for having occa- 
sionally presented the true picture of morals, that 
families now-a-days bury in the shade, and that the 
observer sometimes has difficulty in divining. He 
has deemed that it is much less dangerous, to mark 
with a willow branch the perilous passages in life, 
as the mariners do on the sands of the Loire, than 
to leave them unknown to the inexperienced." We 
*hall not stop to combat these strange assertions. 
We should only reproduce the victorious refutation 
given of them by M. de Milly in his Revue des ro- 
mans contemporains, a conscientious book, which 



THE TOUCHSTONE OE CHARACTER. 137 

ought to be in the hands of all priests exercising the 
holy ministry. 

What kind of virtue is that which depends upon 
the restless agitations of human passion ? What 
can you reply to the miser, when he too will say to 
you : " It is my heart leads me to the love of gold ; 
I love gold as you love pleasure ?" You will reason 
in vain against him to prove that his passion is vile 
and degrading, he can always answer you : "I love 
gold from the bottom of my soul ! You think it 
nothing to ruin the wife of your friend, to deprive 
his daughter of her honor ; you cannot resist the 
impulses of your heart. Very well ; but I prefer 
to amass gold, which rules the world. You delight 
in perverting consciences by love and seduction ; I 
prefer to buy them. Seduction is a tedious process, 
a purchase is sooner accomplished. Gold is my 
master, pleasure is yours. If you are right, I am 
not wrong." 

But what voices are these I hear resounding in 
my ears ? Those men whom you call vicious, have 
also their apology. They accuse the severity of the 
law, which has no compassion on their weakness. 
All say that their natural inclination is more power- 
ful than their desire for good. In reality, they have 
all alike sacrificed their lives and virtue to selfish- 
ness. Think you, you have done better than they ? 

11 



138 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Can you, from the height of your wisdom, cast with 
contempt a stone at them ? No, a thousand times, 
no; you have, like them, sacrificed order and duty 
to the love of pleasure. For why speak to you here 
of devotion and virtue ? Have you not destroyed 
the happiness of thousands of lacerated souls ? 
Have you ever respected their repose ? What de- 
sires have you immolated, and what sacrifices have 
you made ? You have stained and degraded the 
lives of those whom you pretended to love ; you 
have torn from their brows that crown of purity 
which is the glory and power of woman. Not thus 
does virtue and devotion act. You have likewise 
really violated all the instincts of reason within you, 
which find their true gratification in pure feelings. 
You have degraded yourselves by degrading the ob- 
ject of your love. Providence has severely punish- 
ed you, by depriving you of that sweet repose of 
the soul, which ever arises from duties fulfilled. 

Ah yes ! had you felt within your souls the true 
influence of love, your lives would have been more 
noble and upright. Love descends from the bosom 
of Grod upon all creation. Love is not that trans- 
port of the senses which acts in the brute ; it is a 
sentiment, strong and pure as duty ; it is love which, 
speaking in the heart of mothers, teaches them a 
devotedness even unto death ; it is love which, tri- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 139 

umpiring over man's natural inconstancy, lives in 
the depths of married hearts, even to the last hour 
of life ; it is love, which leads them to feel as if they 
were but one soul and one flesh ; it is love which 
inspires Christian hearts with that invincible zeal 
for humanity entire, which enables them to support 
the weak, to enlighten the ignorant, to seek out the 
afflicted, and even to die for them, if necessary. 
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all 
things : it bears all miseries, it believes all possible 
for the salvation of its brethren, and hopes all, 
rather than abandon them to their malice and cor- 
ruption. 

Oh ! how melancholy is it to see in the degrada- 
tion amid which we live, egotistical and sensual pas- 
sions, audaciously adorning themselves with the 
most glorious names ! It was not enough to have 
deserted the altars of virtue, but the stones must 
be torn from her sanctuary, to ornament the impure 
temple of her enemies. It was not sufficient to 
have blasphemed virtue, but her very name must 
be taken from her, in order that, if possible, she 
might be forgotten among men. When the Heathen 
overthrew Jerusalem, a man sat down to weep there, 
over the sad ruins. We too, Christians of these 
later' ages, grief oppresses us and weighs us down. 
Seated on the fallen stones of the sanctuary, we 



140 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

gaze towards the East, to discover whether the Sun 
will again warm the benumbed Earth, and if Jeru- 
salem be again to arise, more brilliant and more 
beautiful. 



CHAPTER V. 



SERVITUDE AND IilBERTY. 



I SPEAK THEN OF LIBERTY. AND I DENOUNCE ONE OF ITS ENEMIES. I DE- 
NOUNCE TO YOU AN ATROCIOUS AND IGNOBLE DESPOTISM. THE DESPOTISM OF 

the senses — (The B. P. Laeardaire.) 



We find in the G-ospel this profound observation : 
" We cannot serve two masters." Man is placed, 
so to speak, on the borders of two rival empires. 
In his capacity of spiritual being, he feels himself 
attracted towards the invisible realm of thought, 
the end and centre of his intelligence : but sensuous 
nature, living and vivid within him, endeavors to 
captivate his soul. She has a thousand modes of 
speech, and a thousand enchantments to fling round 
him. She speaks to him through the perfume of 
flowers, through the warm and balmy breezes of 
spring, and through all the varied aspects of the 
earth. Her's is the irresistible charm, which has 
seduced and perverted half the human race. The 
history of paganism is nothing but a wild enthusiasm 
for sensuous nature. What were its hymns, if not 
love-songs addressed to her ? 

11* 



142 THE TOUCHSTONE OF. CHARACTER. 

The aim of Christianity was to recall humanity 
to the eternal world of thought. It broke the heavy 
chain which bound man to the creature. But see, 
how, even under the influence of Revelation, nature 
oppresses and binds us ! How she still speaks to all 
our senses ! How she rules our imaginations ! How 
she misleads and tyrannises over our hearts ! 

One who had long studied all the mysteries of the 
soul, said with admirable eloquence : 

" Nature is crafty, and draws away many, ensnares 
them and deceives them, and always intends herself 
for her end. She labors for her own interest, and 
considers what gain she may reap from another : 
she loves idleness and bodily rest ; she seeks to have 
things that are curious and fine, and does not care 
for things that are cheap and coarse ; she has re- 
gard to temporal things, rejoices at earthly gain, is 
troubled at lcsses, and is provoked at every slight 
injurious word ; she is covetous, and is more willing 
to take than to give, and loves to have things to her- 
self; she inclines to creatures, to her own flesh, to 
vanities, and to gadding abroad ; she willingly re- 
ceives exterior comfort, in which she may be sensi- 
bly delighted ; she doth all for her own lucre and 
interest ■ she can do nothing gratis, but hopes to 
gain something equal, or better, or praise, or favor 
for her good deeds ; and covets to have her actions 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 143 

and gifts much valued ; she rejoices in a multitude 
of friends and kindred ; she glories in the nobility 
of her stock and descent ; she fawns on them that 
are in power, flatters the rich, and applauds such as 
are like herself; she easily complains of want and 
of trouble ; she turns all things to herself, and for 
herself she labors and disputes." 

" Lord my God," adds the eloquent recluse, 
" who hast created me to thine own image and like- 
ness, grant me this grace, which thou has declared 
to be so great, and so necessary to salvation, that I 
may overcome my corrupt nature, which draws me 
to sin and perdition. For I perceive in my flesh 
the law of sin contradicting the law of my mind, 
and leading me captive to obey sensuality in many 
things ; neither can I resist the passions therefore, 
unless assisted by thy holy grace, infused copiously 
into my heart. I stand in need of grace, and of a 
great grace, to overcome nature, which is always 
prone to evil from its youth. And yet in the flesh 
I serve the law of sin, whilst I rather obey sensu- 
ality than reason. Hence it is, that to will good is 
present with me, but how to accomplish it I do not 
find." — {Imitation of Christ, book III, chap. LIV, 
andLV.) 

It is above all through pleasure, that the world of 
sense strives to seize upon us. Surrounded by 



144 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Christian ideas, the gross excesses of paganism re- 
volt and disgust us. But observe how subtle and 
flexible a passion is sensuality ; it puts on a thou- 
sand seductive forms to mislead and deceive souls. 
Sometimes it begins in the spirit, to end in the flesh 
Then is it nothing but an innocent revery, an effu- 
sion of feeling, or an immaterial expression of the 
desire of loving, always experienced by the heart. 
Thus does it often commence in souls governed by 
ideal tendencies, which could never be misled by 
low or mean passions. It is a kind of sickly poetry, 
which lulls the imagination ; it is a gilded dream 
caressed by the fancy ; it is only a thought, it is not 
even a desire, and is still far from being a passion. 
There are souls which, during long years, bear 
within them this seed of death almost without being 
aware of it, until the moment comes when the storm 
bursts, and overwhelms all in its savage fury. 

Let us hear the author of the Poesies de Joseph 
Delorme : 

" To dream, as you well know, is to will nothing, 
to pour forth the present sensation at random on 
surrounding objects, and to swell ourselves into the 
dimensions of the universe, by mingling our person- 
ality with all that we feel ; while prayer has a defi- 
nite aim, is humble, recollected, supplicates with 
folded hands, and even in its most earnest requests, 
is crowned with disinterestedness." 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 145 

M. Sainte-Beuve is not satisfied with proscribing 
revery, lie condemns, without reserve, all those illu- 
sions which subtle passion so carefully cherishes, by 
stating, as we have done, the misery and impotence 
of human nature. 

" Thus," says he, " spoke the pure woman (Ma- 
dame de Couaen), and I listened mute with delight. 
The pure woman believes in all these plans for the 
future ; she could abide by them happily to the end, 
and therein I judge her far superior to man.* But 



* We very willingly avow the superiority of the na- 
ture of woman over that of man. We have no hesita- 
tion in confessing that her affections may be much 
more pure and disinterested. However, let us follow 
to the end the drama presented by M. Sainte-Beuve in 
his " Volupte." Lucy de Couaen is certainly the most 
perfect type imaginable of a truly modest woman : 
there is nothing egotistical or sensual in her affections. 
" Lucy will not have a lover," as M. de Milly very well 
remarks, " Oh ! no, never ! she will have a friend, she 
requires a friend ; not that the one promised her by 
marriage, has failed her ; but he is too much occupied, 
he is not on the spot ; and to whom can Lucy confide 
her troubles as a daughter, her torments as a wife and 
mother ? Who will share her anguish, when her hus- 
band is in danger ? her visits, when he is a prisoner } 
A lover ; Oh ! no ; still again no, never, but a friend ; 
but this friend will become so dear, so indispensable, 
that if he leaves her, if he approaches another woman, 
Lucy will suffer, Lucy will die !" — (De Milly, "Revue 
des romans contemporains," Sainte-Beuve.) 



146 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

the man who loves, and who, hearing these blissful 
projects fall from persuasive lips, believes in them 
for a moment, and thinks himself capable of con- 
forming to them during his whole life, is deceived, 
and has not the strength which he imagines he pos- 
sesses. Man, even were he endowed by Heaven as 
Abel or John, inevitably suffers in secret from his 
false and incomplete position; he feels himself 
wounded in his secondary nature, secretly complain- 
ing and warring ; moments, apparently the most 
harmonious, soon become sad, dangerous, and filled 
with shame ; thence angry and cruel recrimina- 
tions." — (Sainte-Beuve, Volupte.) 

Christian moralists had then a profound insight 
into the heart of man when they said : " The great- 
est disorders have frequently commenced from the sen- 
suousness of a flower."* The world of nature is 
like the Indian fig, which speedily spreads into a 
forest. The germ hidden within the innermost folds 
of the heart, takes root and grows ; it soon pro- 
duces both flower and fruit. It stifles in the depths 
of our being, with its luxuriant vegetation, all the 
sweet and perfumed plants, which were beginning to 
germinate beneath the dews of Heaven. Insensibly 
the reign of nature, that is to say the reign of misery, 



* This admirable sentence is from Bousset. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 147 

increases without bounds within our souls. When, 
on the other hand, the spirit strives towards the in- 
visible world for nourishment and strength, it is en- 
gaged in a constant struggle for freedom. In this 
continual communion of the spirit with G-od, it 
brings to earth the power of Heaven, Divine liberty. 
Man is then truly king of the universe, and therein 
consists his highest glory and greatness. Then 
shines on his noble brow the glorious privilege ot 
the predestined children of Heaven, a pure and holy 
liberty. The magnificence of this world, instead ot 
placing his soul in bondage, raises it to the Author 
of all. The beauty of creatures no longer intoxi- 
cates his heart ; it but makes him ponder on that 
infinite and immortal splendor, of which the vain 
and perishable beauty we see here below, is only a 
faint reflection. 

" Behold then in this land of pilgrimage," said 
Gerson, " I called my soul to contemplate through 
the portals of the senses, the heavens, the earth, the 
sea, and all the marvels of beauty they contain : the 
beauty of form in bodies, due to their regular pro- 
portions and to the charms of color and light ; the 
beauty of tones and song ; the beauty of what we 
touch and taste, of what we feel and breathe ; infi- 
nite charms, which attract and seduce the heart. 
And I said : Behold my soul, behold thy loves, the 



14S THE! TOtiCItSTONE Of CttARACTEfe. 

flowers in thy garland, the fruits in thy crown ; com- 
plain no longer, and say no more that thou languish- 
est with love. But my soul turned from these de- 
lights ; she disdained the beauty offered by the 
senses, she only felt repugnance towards so many 
lovely objects, she despised all love but that which 
she felt for Thee, my Grod ! Proud, as We are 
when we love, only Thee did she deign to love, 
Thou who art the whole of power, wisdom and 
beauty! What is there, she said to me, man, 
what is there for thee and for me in all this beauty 
of material things ? Is it for us to love delights 
which we share with the brute creation ? Creatures 
may be brilliant and beautiful, I do not deny it ; but 
how much greater is the beauty and the glory of 
Him who made them all ! If an image, a shadow, 
a form, an odor can thus attract us, how forcibly 
should we not be drawn towards the Source whence 
all these things proceed, towards God, the love of 
whom leaves neither bitterness nor regret ! Him 
do I sing, and on Him do I call. When will He 
come ? I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, if 
you find my beloved, that you tell him that I lan- 
guish with love." 

" The beauty of composite things," says a cele- 
brated preacher of the sixteenth century, "results 
from the proportion of the parts or the harmony of 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 149 

colors ; but in that which is simple, beauty is trans- 
figuration and light ; thence must we seek the su- 
preme beauty in its essence, beyond visible objects. 
The more creatures participate in and approach the 
beauty of God, the more beautiful they become, in 
the same manner that the beauty of the body springs 
from the beauty of the soul." 

This sublime philosophy is that of the Sacred 
Books, reproduced by the celebrated writers we 
have just quoted. 

" "With whose beauty (of created things) if they 
being delighted," says the author of Wisdom, "took 
them to be gods : let them know how much the 
Lord of them is more beautiful than they : for the 
first author of beauty made all those things." 

A woman well known for the wanderings of her 
mind and heart, could not refrain from making the 
following eloquent avowals, thus involuntarily re- 
cognising the sublimity of Catholic doctrine on the 
love of Grod, and on the love of creatures : 

" Love, Stenio, is not what you deem it; it is not 
this violent aspiration of every faculty towards a cre- 
ated being: it is the holy aspira 1 ion of the most 
ethereal part of our nature towards the unknown. 
Contracted beings, we seek unceasingly to satisfy 
the tormenting and insatiable desires which consume 
us ; we seek their gratification in that which sur- 
12 



150 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

rounds us, and, poor prodigals that we are, we adorn 
our perishable idols with all the immaterial beau- 
ties we have seen in our dreams. The emotions of 
our senses do not suffice ; nature has nothing exqui- 
site enough in the treasure-house of her simple joys 
to quench the thirst for happiness within us; we 
would have heaven, and it is not within our grasp. 
Thence do we see heaven in a creature like to our- 
selves, and we expend in its service, all the high 
energies given us for nobler ends. We refuse to 
God the sentiment of adoration, a sentiment placed 
within us to be given to God alone ; and we pour it 
out upon a feeble and imperfect being, who becomes 
the object of our idolatrous worship. Strange error 
of an exacting and impotent generation ! Then, 
when the veil falls, and we see the creature, mise- 
rable and imperfect, behind the clouds of incense 
and the halo of love, we are dismayed at our delu- 
sion, we blush for it, we overturn the idol and 
trample it under foot. And then we seek another, 
for we must love, and thus are we again and again 
deceived until the time when, disabused, purified, 
and enlightened, we abandon the hope of a lasting 
affection on earth, and raise towards God that pure 
and enthusiastic homage, which should never have 
been offered but to Him alone."* 



*See "Wisdom," xiii, 1-3. Gerson, "GEuvres com- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 151 

But this admirable doctrine can never Ibe under- 
stood by the slave of sense. His horizon narrows 
daily, and the bright sun shining in his heart insen- 
sibly darkens. Alas ! he becomes accustomed to 
live without the thought of God. But without God, 
where are truth and virtue ? What is life without 
God ? How can we forget Him who alone is the 
Sustainer and Director of creation entire ? Can 



pletes," IV, 742, " Sermon on St. Bernard." Savona- 
rola, " Sermon on the conversation between Christ and 
the Samaritan woman." The confession we have just 
quoted is from George Sand, "Lelia." Some writers 
have advanced that this sublime theology is no other 
than that of Plato : but this superficial view disappears 
before a more attentive comparison of the doctrines. 

" The Beautiful which Plato teaches us to love," says 
a celebrated professor of the Sorbonne, "is an idea 
which is not far from God, for it is the idea of infinite 
beauty; and all that is infinite comes near to God. 
However this idea of infinite beauty, compared with 
that God whom Christianity teaches us to love, is some- 
what vague and confused. It is pure ; but in propor- 
tion as it becomes more refined, it seems to evaporate. 
It has all that is needful for charming and elevating 
the imagination, it is the best of literary inspirations ; 
but to attract the soul, to possess it through love, it is 
wanting in reality. It does not touch the heart as the 
God, our Father, who is in Heaven, nor can it attach it 
as the God, made Man, who died for us on the cross. 
The object offered by Christianity to our love, has then 
more power over the soul, it is more definite ; and let 
us not forget to remark that in Plato, the object of love 



152 TEE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

there be any happiness in such a forgetfulness ? To 
forget God ! is it not to detach ourselves voluntarily 
from the living source which vivifies and nourishes 
our intelligence ? See likewise the servitude, the 
languor, the softness, and the weakness, which rule 
over that soul ! How soon she makes to herself car- 
nal gods that seem to flatter her abasement ! She 
loves to hide from herself the violence of her op- 
pression, but she can scarcely conceal the fact, that 
her existence has entirely passed into that of another. 
She knows that her happiness hangs upon a thread, 



has no reality except in the lower steps of the Beauti- 
ful, which is a great difficulty. On the contrary, in 
Christianity, the reality is at the summit of the ladder, 
and the soul is naturally drawn upwards. Plato spirit- 
ualises love ; but he has rendered it somewhat vague 
and indefinite. Christianity has restored to love the 
reality which properly belongs to it, by giving it God 
Himself, as its object and end." — (Saint-Marc Girar- 
din, "Revue des deux Mondes," Oct. 1847, or "Cours 
de literature dramatique," II.) The theory of Plato in 
the " Banquet,'' is very far from being as pure as the 
intellectual author of the "Cours de literature drama- 
tique" thinks it. Does he not himself, when speaking 
of the ideas of Plato on love, recall this line of Racine : 

" What wild disorders caused not love in Greece !" 
(See for the proof, Gougenot des Mousseaux, " le Monde 
avant le Christ." Leland, "Nouvelle demonstration 
evangelique." Dabas, " de la Decheance de la femme," 
in 'TUniversite Catholique," 3d series, II, III, IV.) 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 153 

and that thread beyond her power ; she feels that 
her life is bound to another life beyond her control. 
It is a fearful thing to be no longer master of our 
own destiny, and to find all our happiness depending 
on the will of another, who rarely understands all 
the sacrifices that have been made. Ah ! how much 
then must the pure and peaceable days of Christian 
liberty be regretted ! We were so strong when 
God was our only master, so raised above this sad 
world, above the vain opinions of men, and their 
changing caprices ! Alas ! how happy would we be 
to recover our proud independence ! 

Meanwhile, life vanishes, as the leaves falling one 
by one from the tree which has nourished them. 
From day to day we lose our celestial instincts, all 
thoughts of futurity and immortality ; we arrive at 
the very portals of the tomb without having fulfilled 
our destiny. Yet we all have a destiny : therein is 
our greatness and often our misery Each man on 
coming into this world, brings with him a task to be 
accomplished. Life is no arena abandoned to man's 
vain caprice : his mission comes from above, and 
one day he must render an account of it Life is 
made for action, not for dreaming ; for duty, not for 
passion. In creating the universe, Grod certainly 
did not make it for frivolous ends ; He could not 
give the human race a vocation unworthy of the sub- 

12* 



154 THE TOUCHSTONE 0£ CHARACTER. 

limity of His infinite intelligence. The destiny of 
humanity is to come to Grod : to live, is to gravitate 
towards Grod. Every thought, every affection, which 
has no relation to this supreme end of our intelli- 
gence and of our heart, is lost for immortality. 
Thus considered, how sublime and beautiful life be- 
comes ! It is a continual worship of the Infinite. 
To live thus, is to think for Grod, to act for Grod, and 
to love for Grod. The thought of Grod then consti- 
tutes an existence infinitely superior to that of the 
senses and imagination. I ask you, can you find 
anything more entirely rational? If God is the 
cause and end of all creation, should not our life, 
which springs from Him, wholly return to Him ? 
If He is the uncreated truth, is He not thence the 
strength of our intelligence ? If He is essential 
order, the very ideal of good, must He not be our 
permanent rule ? If He is the infinite beauty and 
goodness after which our souls instinctively long, 
must not love be a happiness as well as a duty ? 

Such are the serious and truly important ideas 
which should ever fill our existence. Amid these 
ideas reigns an atmosphere of calmness and sere- 
nity, sought in vain in the bosom of the passions. 
A certain poet has said, that the temple of the wise 
is in a region far removed from the agitations of the 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 155 

vulgar.* This beautiful thought is much more true 
of the calm of virtue. Indeed, the sentiment of 
duty can alone deliver from the heavy thraldom of 
the passions. Worldly and superficial minds ima- 
gine virtue to he an insupportable torture ;| but they 
do not know that Grod has compensations for all sa- 
crifices, and that each trial bears with it its own 
recompense. Sufferings from duty are not like 
those from passion. The first leave behind them in 
the soul, a feeling of peace and happiness ; they 
never occasion that secret bitterness, which is always 
more or less present, when we have failed to follow 
the pure instincts of conscience. Suffering is the 
condition of the human race. Christianity does not 
conceal from us this serious vocation. But suffer- 
ings for sufferings, those which ever follow in the 
train of the passions are, in my opinion, by far the 
most to be dreaded. Like ye, I must use my feet 
on the paths of life ; but I do not walk with my 
brow sadly bent towards the earth, my eyes are 
raised to Heaven ; and it even seems to me as if the 



* " Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena." — (Lu- 
cretius.) 

f "Vident cruces," said St. Bernard; "nonvident 
unctiones." 



156 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

golden stars, the messengers of the Most High, were 
sympathising in the workings of my destiny. 

To all that I have said on the moral consequences 
of sensuality, I believe I may add a fundamental 
reflection. Have you not observed, that this pas- 
sion once rooted in the depths of the soul, old age 
itself, which destroys so many illusions, does not 
always weaken its cruel servitude ? When this is 
the case, it gives rise to one of the most degrading 
positions that can be imagined. In the beginning 
of life, passion meets with restraints and obstacles, 
because the soul cannot then systematically break 
through all the pure traditions derived from our an- 
cestors. Thus youth is oftgn preserved from com- 
plete perversion, by the germs of good which it still 
possesses. Happy inconsequence, which frequently 
arrests upon the slippery, downward path, many 
souls which afterwards return to virtue and truth. 
But when old age comes, it is not thus; sensuality 
is no longer that heat of the blood, that foolish en- 
thusiasm and mobility of affections and ideas which 
often constitute the passions of our earlier years. 
Later, all becomes science and calculation. Matu- 
rity of thought, knowledge of men, experience in 
business, all serve to a frightful diplomacy. They 
know well they can no longer be loved ; but they 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 157 

can purchase and obtain the semblance through cun- 
ning or power. 

My soul revolts and grows indignant in thinking 
@f degraded old age, seeking the hut of the poor, 
to buy for a little bread, the unstained honor of the 
daughters of the people. These miserable and 
wicked beings, who can excuse their odious passions 
neither by the impetuosity of the senses, nor by the 
weakness of the heart, trade in the happiness and 
peace of indigent families. It is most deplorable, 
and, in a liberal age, should revolt all who have pre- 
served a little feeling of honor, and of respect for 
the imprescriptible rights of the people, to see the 
family of the workman prematurely corrupted, in 
her who will one day become a wife and a mother. 
How edifying is it for the young, who are advanced 
midway in their career, to have before their eyes 
these whitened heads, stained with infamy ! These 
shameful fathers will scarcely venture to propose 
themselves as models to their sons ! 

See, on the other hand, how the old man, whose 
life has been just and pure, stands in the midst of 
his family as a living tradition of the virtues of the 
past. He can show his little ones with pride, his 
head bowed by labor and years. "When he speaks 
of chastity, he has no fear of finding the scandals of 
his life cast into his face ; and his life itself is the 



158 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

most noble instruction he can impart to them. 
Happy effects of purity of soul, which preserves to 
all ages and situations their poetry and greatness ! 
There is no mind, let it be ever so corrupted, that 
does not feel the penetrating charm of virtue. Yice 
has only a false greatness and a f Jse wisdom. Un- 
der its influence the sublimity of human existence 
disappears, and all becomes narrow and degraded. 
Those spirits who, notwithstanding some generosity, 
still bow beneath its heavy yoke, are interiorly hu- 
miliated by the debasement of human dignity which 
is its unfailing consequence. Those, on the con- 
trary, who have devoted their existence to the wor- 
ship of the ideal, are proud of t e elevation of their 
life and of their destiny. This feeling of interior 
satisfaction is more precious and more dear than all 
the sublime gifts of the intellect. And this is not 
difficult to understand ; for if there be anything 
grand and magnificent in this world of shadows, is it 
not virtue ? Without virtue, what would the world 
be ? A vast arena of combat and misery, wherein 
we wait for death with veiled heads. 

I have said, and I think I have proved, that sen- 
suality saps in individuals the very foundations of 
moral liberty. But think you that it has any more 
respect for the venerable and sacred treasure called, 
the independence of the people ? 



THE TOUCHSTONE OV CHARACTER. 159 

" Vice," as the R. P. Lacordaire exclaims with 
admirable energy, " vice does not even spare na- 
tions. A time comes, (and for what people has it 
not sooner or later arrived,) a time comes, when 
civilised, succeeds to heroic history ; personal cha- 
racter dwarfs, the body decreases in size, physical 
and moral strength vanish together ; and from afar 
we hear the murmur of the approaching barbarian, 
who watches for the hour when this decrepit people 
is to be swept from the face of the earth. When 
the fatal hour strikes, when a country trembles in 
the presence of its destiny, what has passed over it ? 
What breath has poisoned the source of its life ? 
Ever the same evil, G entlemen ; Death has but one 
great accomplice. This people has debased itself 
amid the homicidal joys of sensuality ; it has shed 
its blood drop by drop, and no longer in floods upon 
the fertile fields of devotion ; and for blood shed in 
this manner, there is an inevitable vengeance, that 
which all nations whose career is finished, must bear 
in slavery and ruin. 

" Pardon me, Gentlemen, if I do not pursue my 
idea : why should I ? But I see many young people 
here ; let them remember then, every time the 
tempter attacks them, that he is the enemy of life, 
of beauty, of goodness, of strength and glory ; that 
he is the universal and national enemy. Ah ! Gren- 



160 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

tlemen, were a Tartar to knock at your door and 
demand of you some treason against France, how 
great would be your horror ? And yet, sensuality 
asks from you nothing else ; the blood it demands of 
you, even were it not due to Eternity, would still 
be the blood of the Fatherland, and of the Future !" 



CHAPTER VI. 






SENSUALITY IN THE FAMILY. 



Woman only escaped from the bondage of the law to fall under 
the yoke of vice, or the empire of corruption. — (dabas.) 



The ideas we have previously expressed with re- 
gard to the application of the opinions of the senti- 
mental school to the requirements of individuals, 
appear to us invulnerable in every point of view. 
But it must never be forgotten, that the true value 
of moral theories, can be most effectually judged in 
the social order. Has not the Grospel said, with 
wonderful profundity : " By their fruits shall ye 
know them ?" If Catholic theology, considered in 
relation to the requirements of individuals, be so 
easy to defend and justify, it is above all in social 
questions that we feel its full force and power. 
The rationalistic systems, which are constantly put- 
ting forward the interests of progress^ hide under 
this hypocritical pretext the profound egotism which 
consumes them. In Catholicity, on the contrary, 
the individual sacrifices himself continually to the 
family, and the family, to society. 

13 



162 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

When we consider the doctrine of Christian pu- 
rity apart from the family and society, it is impossi- 
ble to understand all its extension and depth. We 
are fully convinced that the greater part of those 
who on this point oppose the morality of the Gos- 
pel, would tremble were they to know into what 
abysses they would plunge the modern world. Eu- 
ropean civilisation rests, in fact, entirely on the con- 
stitution of the family ; and the family, as now or- 
ganised, necessarily rests, as on the solid rock, on 
the Catholic doctrine of chastity. 

We will not conceal the importance and the diffi- 
culties of the question we here propose to consider ; 
but we will approach it with that frankness, sincerity 
and good faith, which our adversaries themselves, 
have ever acknowledged in all our discussions. 

" Of all the associations of which man is a mem- 
ber," as M. Pabbe G-aume very truly observes, " the 
family is the first. In its bosom, he receives the 
double life of body and soul; under its wing he 
grows up, and, prepared by its care, he passes into 
civil society. Thus we see it established by the 
Creator Himself at the beginning of the world, and 
receiving on its brow, with the first benediction given 
on earth, the glorious seal of immortality : i Increase 
and multiply, and fill the earth? Immutable as the 
Glod from whom it emanated, this sentence will never 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 163 

pass away. In vain did the first rebellion destroy 
the religious association of man with Grod ; in vain 
did the Deluge engulf the political association in 
its avenging waves : the family will survive as an 
ever fertile source whence the stream of generations 
will flow down through ages, until the human race 
shall be complete. 

" The family is not only the most ancient of asso- 
ciations, it is also, at least in one sense, the most 
important. And first, it is the basis of all the 
others,* the basis of the State and of the Church. 
In fact, what is the State, if not the union of a cer- 
tain number of families, under the authority of a 
common head, for the preservation and development 
of their existence and well being ? The Church 
herself, what is she but the union of all Christian 
families under the authority of a common father, 
for the preservation and development of their spirit- 
ual life ? So that what the root is to the tree, the 
spring to the river, the base to the edifice, the family 
is to the State and Church ; from the hands of the 
family the first receives its citizens, the second, her 
children. 

" In a still deeper sense and for reasons yet more 
profound, the family should be called the most im~ 

* This sentence and the succeeding ones of this para- 
graph are only true in a modified, and n »t in the simple 
sense of the terms used. — En. 



164 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

portant of associations. Is not the power of making 
man what he is, and what he is to be, an infallible 
preparation of the glory or the shame, the happiness 
or misery of the world ? Such is the formidable 
mission of the family. Does it not exercise a daily 
and exclusive influence on the first years of infancy ? 
And is not infancy as soft wax on which any form 
may be impressed ? And these forms, whether good 
or evil, received so readily in infancy, are they not 
with some rare exceptions, the only impressions 
which are never effaced ? Man finds himself with 
astonishment in the decline of his age, on the very 
brink of the tomb, even such as he knew himself in 
the spring of his years. More than three thousand 
years ago, this fact had already become proverbial." 
— (G-aume, Histoire de la societe domestique, I, Chap- 
ter 1.) 

If such be the importance of the family, I am 
not surprised that the sovereign Creator of all things, 
blessed with His own divine hands the union of the 
ancestors of the human race, and established it on 
the triple basis of unity, indissolubility, and purity. 
"In fact," says a learned commentator on the 
Scriptures, "marriage is the most intimate and in- 
violable of all human ties. Therefore was it that 
God took Eve from the side of Adam, thus signify- 
ing, that the man and woman are less two than one ; 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 165 

that they are indivisible and inseparable. As one 
flesh cannot be divided and still remain one, so the 
husband cannot be separated from the wife, since 
he is of one flesh with her ; and this unity of flesh, 
is only a figure of the unity of love and of will which 
should reign between them." — (Cornelius a La- 
pide, In Genesim comment, p. 81.) 

Such was the original plan of the Creator. And 
to comprehend to what a degree human passion had 
perverted it, it is only necessary to cast a rapid 
glance over ancient society. Among all pagan na- 
tions, woman became an instrument of pleasure, de- 
based by despotism ; or perhaps, through some rare 
combination of circumstances, turning against the 
family and society the very sword with which she 
had been stricken, she amazed the world by the 
monstrous boldness of her immodesty : she was by 
turns a slave, bowed beneath the rod, or a Messa- 
lina, astounding the universe from the throne of the 
Caesars. 

In the East, the head of the family, constantly 
ruled by egotism and sensuality, claimed the power 
of life and death over his children, and subjected 
woman, with boundless audacity, to all the caprices 
of a brutal and corrupting despotism. Unity, indis- 
solubility, and purity, these sacred principles of 
primitive marriage, were contemptuously trodden 

13* 



166 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 



under foot by nearly the whole of Asiatic civilisa- 
tion ; and these people, whom the pure light of the 
Gospel has not as yet enlightened, dare to preserve 
under the very eyes of Christian liberty, as the most 
precious tradition of the old pagan world, the de- 
gradation of the mother, and the enslavement of the 
child * 



* In Egypt, according to Diodorus Siculus, private 
individuals married as many wives as they pleased. — 
See Diodorus Siculus, book I, §80. The Egyptians 
likewise married their sisters, and justified this incest 
by the example of Osiris. — See Montesquieu, " Esprit 
des lois." With much a moral, we must not be aston- 
ished at the profound corruption of the women. Hero- 
dotus and Strabo relate the abominable customs of the 
temple of Thebes. — See Herodotus, book 1st, Chapter 
182; Strabo, book XVII. Herodotus likewise gives an 
account of the infamies of the Mendesian nome, the 
abominations of the feasts of Adonis and Isis. as well 
as the odious processions, known under the name of 
Phallophori. — See Herodotus, book 11, Chapter XXV. 
and III. The exceeding corruption of the Egyptian 
women, sanctioned by their religion, is universally ad- 
mitted. In Babylonia, Phoenicia, and Syria, the degra- 
dation of morals surpassed all we can imagine. MM. 
Michelet and Quinet t^vho are no Jesuits) are entirely 
revolted by the corruption of these nations. — See Mich- 
elet, ;> History of Rome ;" Quinet, "Genius of Reli- 
gions," Religions of Western Asia. Details may be 
found in the " Pentateuch," and in Hengstenberg, 
" Authenticity of the Pentateuch,"' theology of the 
Pentateuch. Among the Persians, corruption was not 
so great, but the women were not less subjected to a 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 167 

But why should we stop to trace the frightful pic- 
ture of the profound corruption of oriental antiquity ? 
Is not Asia before us, with all its slavery and degra- 

degrading despotism. Polygamy and the seraglio were 
the bases of the family. — See Montesquieu, " Esprit 
des lois," liv. VII, chap. IX. Incest between mother 
and son was approved by their religion. As to the 
situation of women among barbarous nations, Gaume, 
" Histoire de la societe domestique," chap. IV, VI and 
VII, may be consulted ; and above all Gougenot des 
Mousseaux, " le Monde avant le Christ." In all that 
we have said of the East, we have not yet spoken of 
the condition of women and children among the Jews ; 
it was certainly better than among the other Asiatic 
nations. — See Cellerier, " Esprit de la legislation mo- 
saique ;." Michselis, " Droit mosaique ;" Guenee, " Let- 
tres de quelques guifs." M. Dabas has, in our opinion, 
summed up with justice and precision, the opinions of 
these learned men. " The East, says he, presents one 
striking exception ; but this very exception confirms 
the rule, for it is offered by the people of God. If re- 
spect for woman was anywhere to be found in antiqui- 
ty, must it not have been among the people who, with 
the laws of God, preserved a correct remembrance of 
the origin of the first human couple, and the promise 
of the redemption through the Son of Mary % In fact, 
it is found, and to a surprising degree, in the history 
and legislation of the Hebrews. There is no legitima- 
ting violence and tyranny towards women, no arbitrary 
sequestration, no deliberate degradation, nor shameful 
traffic among them. Woman does not appear in their 
midst as enslaved by nature ; and even when circum- 
stances have reduced her to a servile condition, her per- 
son is still fully protected by the law." — (Dabas, " De 
la decheance de la Femme," in the " Universite Catho- 
lique," 2d series, I.) 



168 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

dation, as a perpetual and striking example of a so- 
ciety debased by the love of pleasure ? Is it not 
there, as a convincing proof of the wonderful pro- 
gress effectuated in the world through Christian 
chastity ? Those who so shamelessly deny the as- 
tonishing services rendered to humanity by the 
Church, may cast a glance upon that society of 
slavery, corruption, and misery. No spectacle ever 
made a deeper impression on us; it seems as if Pro- 
vidence, in order to confound the ingratitude of 
modern nations, and to show the whole power of 
Christian purity, had desired to preserve under our 
eyes that old pagan world, bound in its eternal 
chains, whose heavy links Catholic civilisation is 
beginning to rend. 

The East, considered in a moral point of view, 
may be divided into four great zones : Barbarian 
and Mohammedan, Chinese and Brahminical soci- 
ety ; these divisions comprise the whole of Asia. 

Among the barbarians of the East, as among the 
savages of Africa and Oceanica, woman is a stupid 
instrument of pleasure, or rather a beast of burden. 

But how can I pity the condition of these mise- 
rable and degraded beings, when I turn my eyes 
towards the cities governed by the sabre and the 
Koran ? The wife of the Tartar, unceasingly wan- 
dering through the steppes of Asia, can at least con- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 169 

template the soft blue of the heavens ; she breathes 
the aii* of freedom ; sometimes, when the chase or 
the battle call her masters from the tent wherein 
passes her whole life, she can dream and weep ac- 
cording to the fancy of the hour. But why these 
prisons, why these hideous jailors ? Wherefore are 
these women sold in the markets, and driven into 
the midst of the bazaars as a herd of ordinary cat- 
tle ? To see a rampart of iron rise eternally before 
her eyes, to serve till death an abhorred despot, and 
to drag out a languid life amid the tedious idleness 
of a harem, is the fate of the Mohammedan woman, 
the unfortunate victim of despotism and sensuality. 
M. Victor Hugo has very happily described this 
situation in the following lines from his Orientales : 

" Ah ! were I but free, 
This land would I love, 

This fair, plaintive sea, 
These bright stars above, 

These broad fields of maize, 
If through the waifs shade, 

Gleamed not on my gaze, 
The Spahi's keen blade." 

Ah ! when will the word of Christian apostles be 
able to break those chains, and to restore light and 
liberty to those degraded souls ? holy Christian 
liberty, mayest thou be more swift than the winds, 



170 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

more rapid than the lightning, and more powerful 
than the thunderbolt ! May est thou, when the day 
of the Lord shall have arrived, break this cruelest 
link of slavery, and raise to Heaven the brow of the 
lowest of slaves ! my Grod ! when will the happy 
moment come when the cross, that glorious standard 
of the enfranchisement of the nations, shall shine 
from the points of the minarets, and from the sum- 
mits of the pagodas ? When will humanity, rising 
from its degradation, be able to repeat in one im- 
mense chorus from the banks of the Ganges to the 
shores of the Seine : 

" Christ triumphs, He reigns and is the Victor." 

We have found slavery among the Mussulmans, in 
its most undisguised and brutal form ; we shall fin d 
it again in the bosom of Brahminical civilisation . 
under the appearance of a hypocritical domesticity, 
and added to it, the domination of the rod. 

We must first remark that religion, far from being, 
as in Christian countries, the tutelary guardian of 
woman, begins by consecrating her degradation as a 
right, before it is basely tolerated in the ordinary 
practice of life. 

"The woman," says the law of Menu, "is pro- 
tected in her infancy by her father, in her youth by 
her husband, and in her old age by her son. The 
ungovernable impetuosity of temperament, the in- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 17l 

constancy of character, the want of any permanent 
affection, and the natural perversity which charac- 
terise women, will never fail, in despite of all im- 
aginable precautions, to detach them in a short time 
from their husbands." — (See Manava-Dharma-Sas- 
tra, quoted in J. de Maistre's Eclair cissement sur les 
sacrifices.) 

The Hindoos have taken literally the odious regu- 
lations of their sacred code. Destined from her 
infancy to a servile life, the young girl never re- 
ceives, in her paternal home, any kind of moral edu- 
cation. It is the same with intellectual instruction : 
" It is an unheard-of thing that a girl should know 
how to read," says the Rev. Father Tassis. " They 
never attend school. A girls' school in this coun- 
try would be an anomaly. If instruction is so little 
regarded, we may guess what the state of education 
must be. It is among the many other things of 
which the Indians have no idea. I do not think it 
has ever entered into the head of an Indian father 
to form the heart and feelings of his children. 
Thus, the virtues which are the fruit of a good edu- 
cation, as generosity of mind, discretion, affection, 
fidelity, and many others, are here very rare, if in- 
ched they are not despised." — (Annals of the Propa- 
gation of the Faith, Sept. 1847.) 

Among Catholics, the lowest child of the people 



172 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

learns in the village catechetical instructions to re- 
spect herself, and to make others respect her high 
dignity as a woman and as a Christian. 

M. de Cormenin fully understood the power of 
that popular teaching which has contributed so much 
to the progress of liberty and civilisation. " Where 
the Church is, there is the village ; one would say 
that like a mother, she gathers all her children 
around her; she is the central point whereto all 
their life tends ; she is the bond of the community. 
The institution of churches has done more to ad- 
vance civilisation than anything else. There alone 
do all the members of the parochial corporation, 
divided, isolated and dispersed among the cottages, 
assemble and meet together. There are all sexes 
and ages, old men and children, the men on one side, 
and the women on the otlaer. There kneel together 
before the awful majesty of God strong and weak, 
rich and poor, all united by the same humility, and 
blended in the same equality. There, from the 
height of his pulpit, the preacher reminds the great- 
est of the meanness of their origin, and the lowest 
of the grandeur of their destiny. There, he gives 
all men, while reading the Gospel, the most glorious 
examples, as well as the most beautiful precepts of 
fraternity : the proud leave the church more modest, 
the guilty, more repentant, the power of malice 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 173 

is softened, and the miserable learn resignation."* 
But in pagan countries, the priesthood is silent ; 
or if it teach anything, it is always respect for des- 
potism. Modern liberty, which has gone forth from 
the catechetical instructions of the country ecclesi- 
astics, will never emanate from the Brahminical 
sanctuaries ; so that, when the Hindoo girl attains 
the fairest years of her life, she can have no idea of 
the du'ies of a wife, nor of the glorious vocation of 
a mother. 

" What, above all, is here wanting to the woman," 
says a pious missionary, "is education. As it is she 
who first directs the heart of the child, as it is upon 
her knees that she must imbibe the first principles 
of religion and morals, the girl who has received 
nothing from her mother on all these points, can 
give nothing to her children ; the only inheritance 
she can leave them is ignorance, a deprivation of 
every noble and elevated sentiment, and an absence 
of all ideas of order, probity and uprightness, which 
faults are propagated from one generation to ano- 
ther." — (The Rev. Father Tassio, Annals of the 
Propagation of the Faith, Sept. 1847.) 



* We cannot quote all, for it would be necessary to 
introduce the whole of this admirable chapter. — (See 
Timon, " Entretiens de village," l'Eglise.) 

14 



174 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Finally, the marriage day arrives, the woman is 
bought by her husband : she of course is never con- 
sulted as to her tastes and inclinations The be- 
trothed see each other for the first time on their 
wedding day : as a young man only requires a ser- 
vant and not a true wife, there is no need of much 
deliberation and choice. Besides, in order to esta- 
blish peace and maintain harmony of disposition, 
the Hindoo holds always in abeyance, the resource 
of force. In this classic land of despotism, convic- 
tion is nothing, and the rod is all ; so that there is 
no inhabitant of the peninsula who does not govern 
his family by means of brutality to which the mean- 
est of servants among us would not submit.* In 
Catholic countries, thanks to Christian liberty, the 
poorest woman attached to the soil ; the most mise- 
rable beggar, whose only support is a few pennies 
won by the sweat of her brow, is more respected 
than a Hindoo wife, under the laws of the wise and 
ancient Brahminical civilisation ! 

But despotism invariably causes hypocrisy: the 



* The Indian women never eat with their husbands 
and sons. " If they commit the least fault,' 1 says Fa- 
ther Tassis, "they must expect to expiate it by blows; 
it is a husband's duty to beat his wile when she does 
not serve him according to his requisitions. There is 
no Indian who does not use the rod. 1 '' 



•THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER 175 

women, as might be foreseen, never love their hus- 
bands. They dry their eyes as soon as the corpse 
is removed from their sight. Formerly, the widow 
was obliged to burn herself on the funeral pile of 
her husband.* As European laws no longer permit 
these abominable sacrifices, the pagan priests re- 
venge themselves by crushing the widow under all 
kinds of vexations. After having deprived her of 
the power of inheriting from her husband, they for- 
bid her to marry again, and leave her to drag out 
the remainder of her melancholy life, without pro- 
tection, and without friends. 

'■ This is the sum of my observations on the con- 
dition of women in India," says the good missionary 
who has furnished us with these curious details 
" Let those of the same sex to whom you will have 
the opportunity of communicating them, understand 
from this sketch what they owe to Christianity, and 



* It was not until after the 4th of December, 1829, 
that an ordinance was promulgated by the general go- 
vernment of English India for the abolition of sacrifi- 
ces. The same measures had been take» in French 
India some years previously. But, in 1803, the govern- 
ment of Bengal, wishing to know the number of wo- 
men led by a barbarous prejudice to the funeral pyres 
of their husbands, found it was not less than 30,000 
every year. — (See de Maistre, " Eclaircissement sur les 
sacrifices.) 



176 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

what reason they have to lore our holy religion, to 
attach themselves to it more and more, to seek al* 
their happiness 1 in its maxims, and to impart to their 
children the treasure of its institutions, and of its 
divine hopes." 

In Chinese civilisation, women are no happier. 
What justice can they expect from a degraded 
people, of whom a cotemporary missionary says : 
" China is a den of robbers, a vast receptacle of 
infamy, a forest of reeds filled with wind." An 
officer of the Navy, just returned from the Celestial 
Empire, related still more odious details to one of 
our most intimate friends. The victim of the gene- 
ral corruption, woman has become one of its most 
active instruments. And, a thing before unheard 
of, she has even forgotten that feeling which is the 
last to die in the female breast, the feeling of mater- 
nity. It is now the Christian virgin who seeks in 
the crossways, and rescues from the ditches, those 
poor children, to whom the iron law of paganism 
refuses even the tears of a mother ! 

If we may believe Malte-Brun, the Chinese pea- 
sant harnesses his ass and his wife to the same 
plough. As for the abuses of polygamy, they have 
been so great that, according to De Guignes, some 
of the Chinese Emperors had as many as ten thou- 
sand wives. " There are no castes in China," says 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 177 

M. Eduard Biot, " but we find, as in all Asiati c 
countries, a wide division between the two sexes. 
Persons straitened for means, often sell their daugh- 
ters ; whence the custom of polygamy, tolerated in 
China since a very high antiquity. Every Chinese 
may have, besides his wife, several wives of the 
second rank or concubines, whom he buys, and who 
occupy the place of servants in his house. In cities 
where the population is crowded, as in Canton, the 
poor frequently have not the means of supporting 
their children until the age when they may be sold. 
Thus many children are exposed, and even destroy- 
ed at the moment of their birth, especially girls, of 
whom they seek every means of ridding themselves." — 
(Biot, article China in the Encyclopedia of the 
nineteenth century.) But let us see what these 
Chinese women, deemed unworthy even of life, be- 
come under the influence of Christianity. " You 
have already, my Bev. Father, heard of the Chinese 
virgins ; I too wV : h to say a few words concerning 
them. They may truly be called the flower of Chris- 
tianity, and this species of fl »wer does great honor 
to the garden of the Church. How beautiful is it 
to see the lily of virginity blooming here amid the 
corruption of idolatry ! No idea can be conveyed 
of the license of manners in pagan lands ; but the 
excess of vice serves in the designs of Grod, to 

14* • 



178 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

heighten the glory of the purest of virtues, and to 
a clear sighted vision, nothing more could be needed 
for the recognition of its celestial origin. The at- 
traction towards this angelic state nowhere appears 
more powerful than there, where, according to na- 
ture, its very name should be unknown. In my 
district, which contains about nine thousand Chris- 
tians, there are more than three hundred virgins. 
Quite a number of chapela owe their existence to 
the liberality of these pious women, and almost all 
the alms I have received for the mission, have 
reached me through their hands. Those who have 
no means of support but their own labor, desire 
likewise to exercise their charity, and find means of 
making their offerings, but so humbly that they 
avoid being known as carefully as a robber when he 
is engaged upon some wicked enterprise. These 
virgins are most useful in instructing the ignorant, 
in baptising and rearing abandoned children, and is. 
exhorting the pagans in danger of death. If they 
are deaf to their exhortations, they must at least 
praise their zeal, and respect their virtue. The 
Chinese virgins are capable of all that is effected in 
Europe by the Sisters of St. Vincent of Paul. 
Thus is God pleased to extend His blessing over all 
the labors undertaken for love of Him and for His 
glory." — (The Rev. Father Esteve. Annals of t/ie 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 179 

Propagation of the FoAth, Jan. 1848.) (See also 
some admirable details ia a letter from the Rev. 
Father Werner, ibidem, Sept. 1849.) 

It is true that in the West, woman was less de- 
graded, I should have said, less' of a slave, for the 
theory of pleasure, which constituted the very basis 
of paganism, had no respect for the glorious crown 
that the Creator placed on the brow of the first wo- 
man, the mother of the living. If there was any 
country of the ancient world where woman should 
have been honored, free from servitude, and inde- 
pendent of all prejudices, it was Greece. Greece 
was, in fact, before Jesus Christ, pre-eminently the 
land of liberty. Hellas certainly was not, as Asia, 
the classic ground of slavery ; Greece was governed 
by sages and philosophers. Socrates spoke in the 
public squares of Athens, Zeno assembled his disci- 
ples under its porticos, Aristotle taught in the Ly- 
ceum, and Plato, in the gardens of Academus. And 
in Greece too, there were liberty and honors for 
women ; occasionally a great influence was accorded 
them on the destinies of the Athenian democracy. 
But was it to the young girl with chaste and modest 
brow, was it to the wife crowned with the glory of 
maternity, that the city of Minerva raised her altars ? 
We find in Greece, women surrounded byyouDgand 
old, by sages and poets ; but these women are not 



180 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

pure;* and it is to the house of the courtesan Theo- 
dota, that Socrates goes, surrounded by the youth 
of Athens, to discuss love philosophically ! | 

Love ! Could a single woman in all Greece boast 
of having inspired it ? " The courtesans them- 
selves," says M. Dabas, " have only the surface of 
the heart ; the depths remain attached to more 
shameful affections ; for we will barely allude to 
those scandalous liasons, of which the great men of 
Greece have given the example, which poetry has 
taken pleasure in celebrating, and for which philoso- 
.phy herself, has not sufficiently blushed. Thus, the 
beauty of woman, her last fascination, is powerless 
in restoring to her even a part of her lost empire. 
Love exists, but not for her ; she has only the dross 
and the refuse." J 

* See Barthelemy, "Voyage of Anacharsis, 1 ' II, chap. 
20. In Greece prostitution was consecrated by religion. 
The Temple of Venus alone, at Corinth, had as many 
as two thousand courtesans consecrated to the goddess. 
See Guenee, " Lett, de quelques Juifs," III, lett. IX. 

f See Stapfer, " Biographie de Midland,'" art. " So- 
crate."' The philosopher willingly permitted his disci- 
ples to retain their relation with prostitutes, provided 
they did not become attached to it. 

X Dabas, " De la decheance de la femme et de sa re- 
habilitation." Universite Catholique, 2d series, III. 
If the truth of these assertions be doubted, Strabo, 
book X, may be consulted ; Plato, " Dialogues,*" espe- 
cially " The Banquet ;" Plutarch, " Moralia,' 1 treatise on 
" Love j" — he there develops at length this sad subject. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 181 

With such manners and ideas, it was impossible 
that woman should not soon be overwhelmed bj 
degradation and despair. The women of Athens, of 
that little world ruled by philosophy, were thievish, 
sensual, and dissolute. If you have any doubts, 
read Aristophanes, who has preserved for us in his 
living pictures, the whole history of the epoch. 

But woman could not reach liberty through vice ; 
she must reascend her throne of wife and mother, 
crowned with the lilies of modesty, and adorned 
with the purple of martyrdom ; and in Athenian 
society, license in morals never preserved her from 
the endless suffering and incurable despair of slavery. 

" Of all creatures living and endowed with reason, 
cries the Medea of Euripides, we women are the 
most miserable ; we must first, at an enormous price, 
buy a husband, the absolute master of our persons : 
and in this is the greatest risk, whether we receive 
a bad or a good one ; for divorces bring not good 
fame to women, nor is it possible to repudiate one's 
husband. What is then left us but to die ?" 

We have seen the women of paganism under the 
government of philosophers ; let us now consider 
them under the power of statesmen. In fact, as 
Athens was ruled by Wise Men, so was Rome by 
Politicians; now this justice must be rendered to 
statesmen, that they are generally more enlightened 



182 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

as to the interests of the family and society than 
philosophers, who dwell far removed from the actual 
business of life, and who but imperfectly compre- 
hend great social necessities. 

Thus at Rome, the condition of woman was gene- 
rally better than at Athens : the matron had her 
honors and privileges, the family was seriously con- 
sidered : and while the austerity of republican man- 
ners was preserved, we might almost believe that 
the Roman city would escape the contagion which 
at its leisure devoured pagan society. 

But if statesmen were more just towards woman 
than philosophers ; if, notwithstanding the enormous 
abuses of guardianship and divorce ; if, notwith- 
standing the rights of life and death accorded to 
fathers of families, her condition was generally bet- 
ter in Roman, than in Grecian society, she was very 
far from receiving from the politicians of Rome, 
that profound and serious consideration she has ac- 
quired in the bosom of Christian civilisation, through 
the influence of the G-ospel. The majesty of Sena- 
tors and Consuls was constantly reproaching her with 
corruption, or at least with fickleness, weakness, and 
imbecility. Did not Cato, in the midst of the Con- 
script Fathers, while addressing the most solemn 
assembly in the world, go so far as to say in his se- 
vere language when speaking of some claims of the 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 183 

women : " If you give the rein to the caprices of 
these ungovernable animals, do you flatter yourselves 
that they will voluntarily place any limits to their 
license !" Alas ! it would seem as if the Roman 
matrons had labored with all their strength to verify 
by their disorders, this bitter prophecy of the in- 
flexible Censor ! 

A fearful history might be written by any one 
who would patiently collect all that Latin authors 
have related of the morals of the Roman women, 
towards the last days of the Republic, and at the 
beginning of the Empire. But why speak of the 
numberless adulteries, and the frequent use of poi- 
son, which so often disturbed the peace, and annihi- 
lated the order of families ? All these crimes sink 
into insignificance before the excesses which charac- 
terised the decline of the Empire. I should never 
venture to recount the infamies of the festivals of 
Flora and Cybele, or the mysteries of the Bona 
Dea, the odious privilege of the knowledge of which 
the noble matrons had reserved to themselves, and 
wbich made the Roman soldier who has left us the 
frightful picture of them in his cutting satires, 



184 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

blush for shame.* I will be silent upon the details 
of this strange history. 

The time had come ; the blood of Christ had 
flowed on Calvary, Christianity had arisen, and was 
already increasing in the bosom of the world it was 
to purify and save. 



* " Nota bonae secreta dese." — (Juvenal, Satire VI, 
314.) 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE FAMILY REGENERATED. 



Modesty causes peace in a family ; rr is the foundation of the 

UNION AND HARMONY THEREIN REIGNING. — (St. Cyprian.) 



Christian women have been reproached with their 
invincible attachment to the religion of their fathers. 
A certain professor, celebrated for his eccentricities, 
has even ventured to write an odious libel on this 
subject, which the indignation of boaest men of all 
parties has justly condemned. We mean M. Miche- 
let's book, entitled : Dib Pretre, de la Femme^ et de 
la Famile. A rationalistic writer has animadverted 
upon some of the falsifications contained in this 
odious pamphlet. "This book," says M. Saisset, 
" considered with regard to its first principles, and 
with a philosophical eye, contains numerous and 
capital errors. Nay more, it is calculated to impress 
a new and dangerous direction on minds, to substi- 
tute for legitimate defence, violent attack, at once 
passionate and weak ; and for expanded, just and 
solid criticism of religious institutions, a blind ha- 
tred of these very institutions, while waiting for 

15 



186 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

their overthrow ; in short, to substitute for the spirit 
of the nineteenth century, such as forty years of 
labor and progress have made it, that of a past age, — 
a spirit once, productive, but now sterile and deplora- 
ble." Then, characterising the aim and spirit of 
M. Michelet, he adds: " M. Michelet's book is a 
violent manifesto against the Catholic priesthood 
and religion, indeed, against every existing priest- 
hood and religion. Its avowed aim is to represent 
all priests and all religion as most deplorable evils 7 
of which the overthrow cannot be too much desired 
or labored for. The tendency of the book, the effect 
produced, and intended to be produced by it, is, to 
direct the whole intellectual activity, and philosophi- 
cal strength of our age, towards the ruin ot reli- 
gious institutions. If such be M. Michelet's de- 
sign, why should we conceal it ? Let us then ven- 
ture to tell M. Michelet, . . . the sympathising his- 
torian of the middle ages, who has concurred with 
M. Gluizot in withdrawing history from the track of 
the Dupuis and Raynals, in order to lead it into the 
broad paths of an extended and impartial criticism? 
. . . that he is destroying his own work, breaking 
with his past, retrograding, and borrowing the pas- 
sions, hatreds, narrow views, and blind prejudices of 
the eighteenth century. How is it that this enlight- 
ened mind fails to perceive that, far from advancing 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 187 

and preparing the way for philosophy, he retards its 
progress ?"* 

As for ourselves, we will be content with recalling 
to a man who prophesies the downfall of Christian- 
ity, the following words, which close one of the 
volumes of his History of France : " Ah ! I con- 
fide, for Christianity in the very words addressed by 
the Church to her dead : He who believes in me can- 
not die, Christianity has believed, loved and under- 
stood ; Grod and man have met within her sacred 
precincts. She may change in outward appearance ; 
but perish, never . . . She will one morning appear 
to the eyes of those who think they are guarding 
her tomb, and will arise on the third day." 

But to return to our subject. — What is there so 
extraordinary in the unconquerable fidelity which 
seems to connect woman eternally with the destinies 
of the Holy Church of Grod ? " Woman protected 
by Christianity, in turn protects it," says one of the 
most profound thinkers of modern days. There, 



* Saisset, " Revue des Deux Mondes," 1844, Renais- 
sance du Voltairiauisme. To appreciate all the ten- 
dencies of M. Michelet's book, Nettement's " Etudes 
sur le feuilleton-roman," II, should be consulted. For 
a review of the details and the false statements, see 
" Du Pretre de M. Michelet, et du simple bon sens, par 
im solitaire," 



188 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

where you can see only an iniquitous mystery, or an 
effect of weakness and custom, impartial history will 
find the prodigy of an immortal gratitude, which no 
violence, persecution or calumny, has ever succeeded 
in wearying ! 

If woman now plays so important a part in the 
history of modern society ; if she has become the 
centre of the family, the guardian of morals, the 
tutelary angel of the young generations, to what 
does she owe these magnificent prerogatives ? 
Were the legislators of the ancient world able to 
preserve her from slavery and licentiousness ? Did 
philosophy emancipate her ? Had the progress of 
the human mind given her her true place by the 
domestic hearth ?* One day a sinful woman knelt 



* We have spoken of the condition of woman 
throughout Asia. But what must we say if we give 
any account of her deplorable situation in the nume- 
rous islands of Oceanica ? We cannot, however, pass 
over in silence some important and significant facts. 
In New Zealand, husbands break up their households 
at the prompting of the first caprice. — See Gaume, 
" Histoire de la societe domestique,*' II, 232. In the 
same country, when the pagans wish to marry, they 
forcibly seize upon a young girl, and carry her off. — 
See " Annales de la Propagation de la Foi," No. 86, 
page 24. In Australia, the rape is accompanied by the 
most brutal circumstances. In the same country, wo- 
men are often sold to strangers for a piece of bread. — 
See Gaume, " Histoire de la societe domestique," II, 



THE TOUCHSTONE *OF CHARACTER. 189 

I 

at the foot of the Gribbet of slaves : a few drops of 
blood fell upon that unknown penitent. That day, 
eternally memorable in history, pagan woman, re- 
presented at the foot of the Cross by the repentant 
Magdalen, arose, freed from the stains of sin, and 
released from her chains. Her flesh, which she had 
defiled by shameful crimes, was purified beneath the 
scourges of the executioner, upon burning piles, 
and amid the tortures of the thumb-screw and the 
rack.* " God be praised," exclaims St. John Chry- 
sostom, at the sight of the courage of women ; 
" Grod be praised ! Woman is steadfast against 
death. Woman, who brought death into the 



234. In the Marquesas Islands, they are entirely sepa- 
rated from the society of men. — See "Annales," No. 73, 
page 574. In the Vitian Archipelago, they are some- 
times eaten, and frequently immolated on the tombs of 
their husbands. — See "Annales," No. 82, page 192. 
But if an idea be desired of the power of Catholicity in 
rescuing from corruption the nations most degraded by 
a brutal sensuality, the reader may consult the admi- 
rable picture of the' conversion of several of these 
islands. There, as everywhere, Christianity has raised 
woman through purity, and re-established the family 
on its true basis — See "Annales," No. 56, page 192 and 
168 ; No. 60, page 510 ; No. 66, page 193 • No. 68, 
page 59 ; No. 74, page 37 ; No. 82, page 216 ; No. 84, 
page 349. 

* See Ruinart, "Acta sincera martyrum." Universite 
"Catholique, XVII, 385. Les femmes martyres. 

15* 



190 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

world, now breaks that old weapon of the devil. 
A being, feeble, and exposed by nature to every 
outrage, she has herself become an invincible wea- 
pon 1 in the hand of God. Woman is steadfast 
against death. Who is not overpowered with as- 
tonishment ! Woman is steadfast against death, 
against that death which the_ saints themselves for- 
merly found so formidable and so terrible !" — (St. 
John Chrysostom, Dt SS. Bernice et Prodosce, 
virg.) She, who until tken had bowed her head to 
every tyranny, resisted without a tremor the majesty 
of Rome, braved the proconsuls on their bloody 
tribunals, and wearied the lictors with her miracu- 
lous patience. The great men of paganism had 
declared her unworthy of the truth, and incapable 
of virtue : the Church gave her so large a share in 
the apostolate, that with the most glorious conquests 
of Christianity a woman is always found associated. 

This wonderful moral revolution is the work of 
purity. In fact, the Gospel restored to woman her 
whole nobility and dignity through the doctrine of 
virginity. 

She had reached in Greece, a kind of indepen- 
dence, through the license of prostitution ; but was 
this sad liberty capable of elevating either her or 
the family ? Was it through dishonor, and through 
the contempt which naturally follows immorality 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 191 

that she could regain her position, and reconquer 
her rights ? * Liberty can never spring from shame. 
Virtue alone produces and confirms it. To raise 
the dignity of woman, Christianity created for her 
a new condition, wherein she might find indepen- 
dence without license, and merit respect through the 
greatness of her heroism. In a word, a miracle 
must be created, and that miracle was the Christian 
virgin. 

Pagan society restrained and enslaved woman in 
all the developments of her existence ; but after a 
time, there appeared before the eyes of the astonish- 
ed world, a young girl whose only title .came from 
God, and who, in her station as Spouse of Jesus 
Christ, saw every head bend respectfully before her. 
The glory of the Redeemer triumphing; in Heaven, 
seemed to shine around her whom the Christian peo- 
ple surrounded with perpetual homage. Man, while 
contemplating this transfigured being, recognised a 
sister whom, until then, he had misunderstood and 
trampled under foot. He comprehended that she, 
whom the Church judged worthy of becoming the 
Spouse of the Saviour, could no longer remain in 



* M. Saint-Marc Girardin develops this thought ad 
mirably, in the beginning of his analysis of the Trea- 
tise of St. Methodius on Virginity, " Essais " II 



192 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

the condition of a slave. Thus, the doctrine of 
virginity, which appeared indirectly to attack the 
institution of marriage, was, on the contrary, the 
very means which Christianity made use of, to pu- 
rify and regenerate it, without violence or agitation. 

How indeed, could a Christian people possibly 
avoid learning to respect woman deeply, when they 
heard their most illustrious doctors speak as follows : 
" All the gold in the world cannot outweigh a chaste 
soul, exclaims Tertullian. Beautiful and ever young 
in the eyes of the Lord, the virgiDS live for Him, 
and converse familiarly with him ; they possess Him 
night and day, and bring Him a portion in their 
prayers. They receive, in exchange, from the di- 
vine Spouse, His grace as a dowry, together with 
the accomplishment of all their desires. They are 
on earth as the angels in Heaven, and seem already 
to belong to the family of gloried spirits." — {Ad 
Uxor em, Lib. 2.) 

St. Cyprian, the glorious martyr of Carthage, is 
no less eloquent when the admirable privileges of 
the Christian virgins are to be celebrated : "Ye 
perfumed flowers of the Church, master-pieces of 
grace, ornaments of nature, image of Grod wherein 
the sanctity of the Word is reflected, and most 
illustrious portion of the flock of Jesus Christ, ye 
have commenced to be on earth what we shall one 
day be in Heaven." — (De Discip. Virg.) 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 193 

St. Ambrose, as well as ourselves, considered vir- 
ginity as the starting point of the restoration of 
woman's dignity : 

"Every virgin is a queen," said he, "either be- 
cause a virgin consecrated to God is the Spouse of 
the greatest of Monarchs, or because having conquer- 
ed the passions which occasion the most degrading 
thraldom, she acquires a new empire over herself. . 
. . A virgin is a gift from Heaven ; she is the joy 
and glory of her parents, she exercises in her home 
the ministry of chastity. A virgin is a victim self- 
immolated each day, in order to appease the anger 
of Grod by her sacrifice." ~(De Virginitate.) St. 
Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Augustin, and St. Ber- 
nard make use of no other language. 

The Church then, by re-establishing everywhere 
the true dignity of woman, and her true liberty, re- 
modelled the family on the original plan of the 
Creator, and it is well known that modern civilisa- 
tion is the result of the truly social institution of 
Catholic marriage. 

But it seems now, that in consequence of the 
prevalence of the new ideas we have been discus- 
sing, a strong reaction is preparing and has already 
appeared. 

Marriage is falling into discredit and contempt. 
" Formerly," says M. Saint-Marc G-irardin, " there 



194 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

was one marriage in every one hundred and twenty 
inhabitants ; now, there is only one marriage in 
every one hundred and fifty inhabitants. The in- 
crease in the number of natural children corres- 
ponds with the diminution in the number of mar- 
riages : in most of the large cities there is one 
natural child out of every three children." This is 
not only true for Paris, the fact is as remarkable at 
Vienna, as M. Ozanam has shown, in an eloquent 
article in his Dangers de Rome, in the Correspon- 
dent y of February, 1848. 

"Within our memory," adds M. Saint-Marc Gri- 
rardin, a new word has been invented to designate 
illicit connections, free marriage ; and as there are 
persons who think that every word necessarily con- 
veys an idea, they imagine that the above expression 
signifies some new doctrine on marriage. But it is 
not so. What new doctrine can there be on mar- 
riage ? One is either married or not married ; one 
is bound by the civil and religious law to one woman 
during life ; and all this without equivocation or 
evasion. Marriage is so clear and so determinate 
an action, that there is no means of explaining it 
away. In the Church it is a sacrament ; and at the 
Mayor's office, an institution ; in either case, its 
whole strength consists in its inviolable perpetuity ; 
for, take from marriage its perpetuity, and it be- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 195 

comes an illicit union, for a longer or a shorter pe- 
riod, and more or less unlawful ; it is a lease for a 
longer or shorter term." — Essais, II, Du mariage. 

Modern literature echoes these new ideas, and 
under the pretext of delineating the passions and 
excitements of the world, tends to give an opinion 
of woman, which will scarcely encourage a man to 
devote to her his future, and to unite his destiny 
with hers by eternal bonds. Women such as we 
find them in cotemporary romances, would, for the 
most part, make the very prostitutes blush. I am, 
however, very far from believing that all those of 
the nineteenth century resemble the daughters of 
the Pere Goriot, of Balzac ; the heroines of the 
Memoires du Diable, of Soubie ; the countesses of 
the Compagnon du tour de France, of Greorge Sand ; 
or of the Mysteries of Paris, of Eugene Sue. I 
am fully convinced that they who write such books, 
are only acquainted with one portion of the world, 
which they boldly call, modem society ! 

But when we consider the immeasurable influence 
of such works ; when we reflect that they form the 
intellectual nourishment of almost the whole youth 
of France ; that three-fourths of the time they ad- 
dress those who can only view the world on its worst 
side, it is very easy to imagine the unconquerable 
antipathy which must arise in many hearts against 
the institution of Catholic marriage. 



196 the touchstone of character. 

Besides, this institution, considered socially and 
morally, is often painted in the darkest colors by the 
new literature. One soon becomes accustomed to 
view it as a hopeless tyranny, as a crushing preju- 
dice, and as the most cruel subjection of the heart 
and the reason. Then, the spirit of independence, 
which in youthful minds increases the influence of 
such books, the corrupting pictures with which they 
are filled, and the license of morals prevailing in 
them, inspire a taste for an unrestrained libertinism, 
which will no longer submit to the strict bondage of 
Catholic marriage. The female readers of George 
Sand and Daniel Stern, soon require the friends of 
Madame de Warens, or the liberal manners of an 
Adrienne de Cardoville ; and those of the other sex, 
the light loves of a Saint Simonian society, or the 
license of the phalanstery. 

But I must turn my eyes towards a higher sphere. 
Far from this thick and corrupted atmosphere, a 
child is born This young girl learns on her mo- 
ther's knees that there is a God who reads the con- 
science to its lowest depths, and who curses the im- 
pure of heart. She is often taught that her destiny 
is to love God, and to sacrifice to the imperative law 
of duty. A firm and gentle hand keeps far removed 
from her eyes all the scandals of human weakness, 
and from her ears, every word which is not as pure 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 



197 



as the purest of heavens. She does not study the 
true science of life and the law of duty in your im- 
modest books ; she looks to the Grospel for instruc- 
tion in her sacred rights and obligations. 

The young girl matures, as the flower hidden in 
the forest" expands beneath the eye of Grod. We 
feel on seeing her all the sublimity of her moral dig- 
nity, and that she may become a truly Christian 
woman. Vice blushes and bows before her. She 
bears stamped on her noble and elevated brow, such 
unmistakable marks of modesty, that we admire by 
simply seeing her, and divine at once the holiness of 
her heart, and the moral grandeur of her being. 
She has never been told by her mother that life is to 
be a perpetual delirium of love, a sweet dream of 
the early spring. On the contrary, she has often 
repeated to her that one single and solid affection is 
to fill her life, and that every woman who abandons 
herself to the inclinations of her heart, loses with 
er purity the repose and glory of her being. 
In time, she becomes a wife and mother, and the 
husband of her choice will not have passed his fairest 
years among degraded women. She could never 
confide to so debased a soul, the treasure of her 
chastity,* and the guardianship of her happiness. 



* Tertullian eloquently expresses this doctrine. " The 
faithful wife," says he, "is bound to obey the law of 

16 



198 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

The husband whom she chooses will have served his 
apprenticeship to his duties as a father, by a strict, 
continent, and laborious youth. These two hearts 
are united by a perfect esteem, by an entire har- 
mony of feelings and opinions, by an affection 
stronger, deeper, and more enduring than that 
which is called by worldlings, love. Such are the 
beginnings of Catholic marriage, a social marvel, 
which the Gospel alone could have presented to the 
veneration of the world. 

God, to reward the heroic chastity of Christian 
woman, has confided to her the glorious mission of 
saving the modern world, which is fast falling into a 
state of corruption, which is eaten up with selfish- 
ness, and infected by the plague of immorality. 

" Only one half of official society is lost," as the 
most spirited writer of the nineteenth century very 
eloquently remuiks : "the other half is as yet safe. 
God in His prescient wisdom, has ordained that what 
perished through man, should be saved through wo- 
man. 



God ; married to a husband who does not respect it, 
how can she at the same time serve God and her hus- 
band ? Through deference for the latter, must she 
then adopt profane customs, must she consent to 
worldly dress and every vanity, must she be the slave 
of his lascivious caprices, and to please him must she 
even stain the sanctity of the nuptial bed?" — ("Ad 
Uxorem," lib. II, cap IV.) 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER, 199 

" Women have retained that virility of soul which 
has bo sex, and which men have lost amid the vaga- 
ries of doubt and materialism. Women have assu- 
med over their husbands that species of empire 
which firm minds always exercise over weak. Wo- 
men teach their young sons those divine lessons in 
morality and religion, which colleges and universi- 
ties cannot entirely efface; women cannot disbe- 
lieve, because they need strength for themselves, 
and for others. 

" Official man, absorbed by continued and violent 
self-love, does not know the people, he does not 
study, nor does he visit, aid, and serve them, he 
does not bear them in his heart, nor has he them 
even upon his lips. 

" But his wife comes into contact with the people 
at all points, — with the old men on their truckle 
beds, with their wives in sickness, with their young 
maidens, their little children, their miseries, their 
hunger, their wounds, their despair, and their souls. 
She approaches them by the labor she procures for 
them, by the education she gives them, by the bodily 
wounds she dresses, by the clothes with which she 
covers them, by the money which, unperceived, she 
places in their hands, by her woman's words, the 
sweetest that the heart of the poor can hear, and 
by that maternal, unresting, inventive, devoted, and 



200 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

unsparing tenderness, which religion alone inspires, 
and which hides in the bosom of Grod, the secret of 
its recompense. 

"Yes, charity, that sublime charity which man 
does not practise, maintains a living faith continu- 
ally within the heart of woman. 

"Let her then leave to man gold, power, stock- 
jobbing, and sophistry ! Let her retain the moral 
government of minds, that government which is the 
most evident sign of beings created by God in His 
image ! The men of the world have abdicated the 
command of their species : it is the woman's part to 
reassume, and exercise it at the fireside, with the 
holy authority of a wife and a mother. 

"If I had a wish to make, it would be that the 
women of the world would read and reread what I 
have here written, for I shall not be understood by 
the men of the world, but the women of the world 
will comprehend me, and Christian women will con- 
firm my testimony when I say, that Providence has 
raised them up to save society. 

" Let women remember that they must answer to 
this society before Grod for the primary education 
of their sons, and for the entire education of their 
daughters. 

" Oh ! why have I not, while addressing their rea- 
son, that victorious force of logic which triumphs in 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 201 

the contest of opinions ! Why have I not, while 
addressing their heart, that persuasive grace which 
overflows from the lips of eloquence ! 

" I am aware that unheard-of efforts have been 
made, and are still making, to degrade the morality 
of the family. Man has been corrupted, and now 
endeavors are not wanting to corrupt woman, but 
she has resisted, and will resist. She will cling to 
religion amid this worldly society which is tottering 
and crumbling in all its parts ; and, in order to raise 
it up again, she will remain erect in the midst of 
ruin." — (De Cormenin, Feu I Feu!) 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE RATIONALISTIC MARRIAGE. 



The weakening of the marriage bond destroys the very foundation 
of the family ; and tf the family totter on its base. what is to be- 
COME of society? — (Saint-Marc Girardin.) 



But what voices trembling with rage, greet my 



ears 



It is true, say these voices, the Grospel was, in 
the beginning, an exceedingly liberal doctrine. It 

16* 



202 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Las, more than any other system, contributed to 
shake on their ancient and venerated bases, the fata} 
institution of castes, and the dangerous domination 
of theocracies. But now, the social organisation 
framed by the strong hands of Christianity, is 
crumbling into ruin. You are right in saying, that 
the whole of Christian society rests upon the insti- 
tution of Catholic marriage ; but that is precisely 
the institution whose legitimacy, liberality, and mo- 
rality is disputed. As serfdom slowly brought about 
the abolition of slavery in its most oppressive forms, 
so has the Gospel, by breaking the pagan tyranny 
which weighed upon woman, gradually prepared the 
way for her entire emancipation. Fourier was one 
of the first of those who in this XlXth century, 
pretend to emancipate women by the most unre- 
strained licentiousness. M. Lerminier, who was not 
then a conservative, addressed these astounding words 
to the author of Leiia : "Do not descend from the 
sublime boldness of thy genius, restore the laws of 
love and marriage.'''' — (An, clela du Jikin ) M. 
Eugene Sue, in the Wandering- Jew, has only repro- 
duced the theory of Fourier. The simple admirers 
of that work have not perceived, that over the 
shoulders of the Jesuits, the author makes war on 
the- whole social order established by Christianity : 
" You have already recognised, in" the person of 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER, 



203 



Adrienne de Cardoville, the anticipated personifica- 
tion of the woman of the phalanstery. . . . Adri- 
enne de Cardoville has all the principles of the sect, 
and we plainly see that the poor child had read Fou- 
rier over M. Sue's shoulder, or over that of his asso- 
ciate. Consequently, she professes the doctrines of 
the founder of the phalanstery with regard to mar- 
riage. She has had 'splendid visions' of the fu- 
ture ; she has breathed a free, pure, and invigora- 
ting atmosphere. * Oh I above all free and generous 
to the soul. 1 She has seen her noble sisters worthy 
and sincere, because they were free; cherished and 
respected, ' because they could unclasp from a disloyal 
hand, a hand loyally given,' 1 etc. . . . Alas ! the sun 
was thirty centuries younger when the wise man 
said: 'There is nothing new under the sun.' If 
the theory of this strange system of morals be new, 
the practice is not so." — (Nettement, Etudes cri- 
'tiqucs, 1. Le Juif Errant.) 

All these silly extravagances had been proclaimed 
by the Saint-Simonians some time before the author 
of the Wandering Jew undertook to promulgate 
them. — (See Bonnetty, Histoire du Saint - Simon- 
isme, in the Annates de philosophie Chretienne, 1st 
series, XI, 338.) 

It is true that these opinions are not shared by 
all the adversaries of Christian purity ; but if the 



204 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

school which holds them, is not the most numerous, 
it certainly possesses the greatest power of logic, 
and at times, the magic of a truly impassioned elo- 
quence. In fact, let it be once admitted that feeling 
is the law of the moral world, let the imprescriptible 
rights of love be established as a principle, and all 
the variable tendencies of the human heart be de- 
clared sacred and inviolable, and by what right can 
men preach to women a morality, which they do not 
accept for themselves, which they declare impracti- 
cable, as well as absurd ? The politicians of the 
sentimental school have, in reality, two weights, and 
two measures. Through inconsequence or hypoc- 
risy, they use Catholic morality against the liberty 
of women, at the very time that they brand it as an 
odious tyranny, or a vulgar prejudice, with regard 
to all that concerns themselves. The partisans of 
u free marriage" have, like them, embraced the opin- 
ions prohibited by Rousseau, in that book of Con- 
fessions, still more profoundly revolutionary than 
the Social Contract We must confess, that the 
Genevan philosopher has shown himself more candid 
and consistent than the greater number of his fol- 
lowers. In truth, if he had no great scruples with 
regard to adultery, and if, notwithstanding the fre- 
quent commission of this anti-social crime, he au- 
daciously ventured to propose himself for the admi- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 205 

ration of posterity, he did not, at the same time, 
hesitate in recommending to the ardent sympathy 
of his readers, some of the women who had shared 
in his excesses. 

A woman, I blush to say it, a woman has dared 
to push the consequences of this odious logic to 
their ultimate limits.' Unveiling the mysteries of 
her soul before the eyes of the whole of France, 
she has openly attacked the great institution of 
Catholic marriage. The writer of whom we speak, 
is a most powerful and serious adversary ; she ap- 
pears convinced, because she is impassioned. One 
would say that she only permits a cry of anguish to 
escape from her heart which she can no longer re- 
strain ; she is not armed with abuse, but with lamen- 
tations ; she does not seem to ask for liberty, but 
merely for a little peace, air, and light. Neverthe- 
less, while appearing to give the simple history of 
the sufferings of her life, she well knows how, by 
turns, to soften and to irritate. She performs the 
office of a tribune, while assuming the air of a vic- 
tim. No one had previously seized, with such subtle 
and ingenious art, upon the weak and vulnerable 
points of an institution encircled, during so many 
centuries, by the love and respect of Christian gene- 
rations. Who was ever able more skilfully to min- 
gle the true and the false, the probable and the cer- 



206 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

tain ? Who could more dexterously transform indi- 
vidual abuses, into a general law ? Thus, this writer 
fascinates, like a serpent, all who do not reflect 
deeply. Besides, we can see from the boldness of 
her ideas, the vigor of her style, and the brilliant 
coloring of her expositions, that she is but the elo- 
quent and sympathetic echo of all those burning 
souls who, living in the midst of a selfish and disor- 
derly society, have felt the same griefs, and experi- 
enced the same sorrows. The great power of revo- 
lutionary writers does not lie in their talent alone, 
but also in a position of society, whose dangers, 
evils, and sufferings they simply relate. 

We have no hesitation in confessing, that the 
greater part of the objections presented by Oeorge 
Sand, cannot be considered as the mere product of 
a sickly imagination. 

We do not pretend to be the apologists for a soci- 
ety which too often tramples under foot the rights 
of the weak, and the holy morality of the Grospel. 
We are not called upon to defend " this society, 
without faith, without courage, without principles, 
without hope, without greatness, without a symbol, 
without harmony, without a present, and without a 
future. What is, in fact, this world? What is 
meant by the world in its own language ? Simply, 
that conventional society which laughs, drinks, gam- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 207 

bLs, enjoys, and blasphemes," — (De Cormenin, 
Feu ! Feu !) But let us hear a man who will not 
be accused of ultramontanism : " Since Philoso- 
phism, that inevitable and hideous consequence of 
Lutheranism, has, while preaching incredulity, 
stretched a funeral pall between heaven and earth, 
and deprived mankind of the divine light, men, be- 
lieving the heavens desolate, because they were 
veiled to their eyes, have crept miserably about in 
the midst of a false and mournful twilight. And 
then, having no longer a heaven to contemplate, 
they have been forced to bow their heads and bend 
their eyes upon the earth. . . . Being employed only 
in hating and enjoying each other, they surveyed 
and looked upon each other face to face .... man 
has voluntarily scrutinised the heart of his brother 
man, and has labored to analyse it, fibre by fibre. 
He has shrunk back dismayed, for his discoveries 
have been fearful ; he has seen in others, a repeti- 
tion of what he found in himself, pride, hatred, and 
malice. And as a holy and salutary faith is no 
longer present to change these organic vices of our 
nature into resignation, love and charity, through 
the hope, or the fear, of eternal reward, or punish- 
ment ; and as man no longer offers to Grod those 
perfidies, deceptions and tortures which He has 
commanded him to bear with humility, in order that 



208 TEE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

these woes might one day be placed to his account, 
man, believing in himself alone, and being unwilling 
to confide his vengeance to the chances of a divine 
justice, has rendered his brother man deception for 
deception, perfidy for perfidy, and torture for tor- 
ture." Is it a Jesuit who speaks thus ? No, it i s 
the author of the Wandering Jew ! — (Eugene Sue? 
la Vigie de Koat, Yen, Preface.) 

One of the apostles of Saint-Simonism answered 
by a bitter picture, the men of political power whom 
he accused of immorality : " The Deputies, grave 
personages, whose authority may not be gainsayed, 
have voted this very year, during the same session, 
less than 800,000 francs to the Bishops, and nearly 
a million to the Opera. This deserves reflection, 
for the Opera is a sensual exhibition, etc. . . . ; and 
the Opera, doubtless pleases the taste of many per- 
sons, since the Deputies, in the distribution of the 
funds, bestow a larger portion on its dancers and 
singers, than on the Bishops of the whole king- 
dom." — (Proces des Saint- Simoniens, 138.) We 
cannot here quote, on account of its length, the ad- 
mirable picture drawn by one of our adversaries, 
M. Pierre Leroux, of the existing state of society, 
corrupted by the twofold passion for gold and plea- 
sure. Copious extracts from its eloquent pages may 
be found in the Annales de philosopkie Chretienne, a 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 209 

collection containing many matters of the highest 
importance in the defence of the Catholic faith, and 
which is directed by a man, to whose science M. 
Saisset himself, has rendered homage, in the Revue 
des Deux Mondes. 

But is it just, is it rational, to attribute to us the 
responsibility of abuses which we anathematise, and 
unceasingly condemn with the whole force of our 
ministry, and the energy of our Christian convic- 
tions ? Is it we, whose hands have fashioned that 
"pays legal," which avariciously metes out to us 
light and life ?* Is it we, who have inspired the 
middle class, whom you almost continually delineate, 
with their rage for pleasure, and their passion for 
gold ? Is it from us, that the world has learned to 
trade in consciences, and to buy with gold, the most 
holy and venerable things ? You say that for some 
miserable advantages of fortune, pure and innocent 
young girls are sacrificed to the lubricity of old men, 
ruined by war or by debauch ; as formerly, unof- 
fending children were burned on pagan altars, in 
honor of the infernal gods. 

The Saint-Simonists, in order to reply to the ob- 
jection of having attacked an institution so pre- 
eminently social as marriage, have made answer, 

* All this was written just before the French Revo- 
lution of 1848. 

17 



210 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

that this institution ought to disappear, because it is 
deeply degraded and corrupted : " There, the can- 
didates for the marriage relation," says one of their 
advocates, "recommended by their personal advan- 
tages, their position, their fortune or their expecta- 
tions, are put up at auction, and knocked down to 
the highest bidder ! For this traffic there are bu- 
reaux of commission and brokerage in all public 
places, in the studios, and in the drawing-rooms. 
Sonorious titles, obscure birth, unmortgaged lands, 
burdened property, unstained fame, blemished re- 
putation, virtues, vices, graces of person, secret or 
visible deformities, age of parents, the retainers of 
an impatiently-waited-for inheritance, number of 
coheirs, robust or feeble health of both, all is weigh- 
ed and estimated. By turns they exact, cheapen, 
haggle, affect disdain for the object to be sold, know 
where they can find better, go off, are called back, 
agree and embrace, each one slyly laughing over his 
g>od bargain. Age and youth, beauty and deform- 
ity, intellect and folly, the most antagonistic or in- 
different sentiments, dare, without blushing for their 
mutual deceit and sordid venality, to make mutual 
alliances, provided that money makes good these 
defects in harmony. There, the notary is the great 
pontiff of matrimony ; the signing of the contract 
is the most imposing ceremony ; the rest is a mere 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 211 

formality. Marriage has publicly entered into the 
domain of speculation, and all this passes for ration- 
al, decent, and honest ; to act otherwise, is to shock 
common sense by the impertinence of passion and 
folly." — (See JProces de Saint- Simoniens, 207.) 

But in what book, in what catechism, in what 
pulpit, have we counselled, or recommended such 
unions ? Are we responsible for those hateful cal- 
culations of avarice, for those unions, which I wil- 
lingly stigmatise as revolting, and which violate 
every natural instinct, as well as all the counsels of 
the G-ospel ? The middle class, you say, sell their 
daughters, and you call that in your coarse language, 
a legal prostitution ! But did we teach them to read 
Diderot and Voltaire ? Did they learn from us to 
turn every thing into gold, even conscience and 
liberty ? The Church can only answer for her own 
deeds. 

Now, hear what the Catholic doctors say concern- 
ing those shameful bargains, pompously called, mar- 
riages of reason. 

"Marriage," exclaims St. John Chrysostom, ." is 
one of the most surprising mysteries, by reason of 
the sublime character which belongs to it, of repre- 
senting the alliance of Jesus Christ with His Church. 
The necessary consequence of which is, that it should 
not be contracted lightly and through interested mo- 



212 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

tives. No, marriage is no bargain ; it is the union 
of the entire life. Nothing is more common than 
to hear it said : Such a one has made a marriage 
which has suddenly enriched him. l He only mar- 
ried his wife for her money.'' What language ! A 
wife for money ! . . . Wo to him %oho only marries 
for money ! How many rich men, married to wealthy 
wives, have lost their repose by increasing their for' 
tune ! How many of the poor, married to poor 
girls, pass their days in happiness and tranquillity. 
It is not then riches, which are to be considered in 
marriage ; it is virtue, goodness, and frugality. 
With these qualities, a woman, even if she be poor, 
will render you happy. Poverty will injure her less 
than riches. Without them, even had she brought 
you the largest dowry, farewell to peace and happi- 
ness, for a storm will rage, which will ravage and 
destroy all in an instant."* 

Our popular theology contains t^e same counsels. 

But there are, you say, in the higher classes of 
society, many unions originating in levity, and of 
which vanity alone forms and binds the heavy and 
galling fetters. A man, proud of a noble name, 

* Saint Chrysostoni, " Laus Maximi," No. 4. The 
same doctor elsewhere recommends mothers to bring 
up their daughters with a contempt for riches and va- 
nity. — ("Homilia XI in I, ad Timotheum.") 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 213 

but without heart or conscience, brings, as a por- 
tion, to his youog wife, a blighted mind, and a dis- 
enchanted soul. He laughs in his sleeve at the 
fidelity promised before God, and before the law. 
I can fully understand how such a manner of acting, 
at once selfish and despicable, should have given 
rise to a book such as Valentine^ the stormy protest 
of a discontented and suffering soul, or to so dis- 
tressing a picture as that of Mathilda by M. Eugene 
Sue.* But is Catholicity to be made answerable for 
the fatal results of such unions ? Are 'hose mar- 
riages which you have pictured with such dark and 
gloomy colors, truly Christian ? I repeat, that we 
are not responsible for evils of which we are entirely 
innocent, since we condemn the hateful calculations 
of vanity, as well as the infamous speculations of 
avarice. Is it we who have infused into those souls, 
now without warmth or life, apathy and death ? Is 
it we who have blasted and rendered them forever 
incapable of affection and happiness ? With you, 
we cannot see without antipathy and disgust, the 
strongest and holiest of loves, after that due to God 
and our native land, transformed into a vulgar con- 



* See George Sand, " Valentine ;" Eugene Sue, " Ma- 
thilde. : ' — In this work, M. Eugene Sue skilfully and 
insidiously began that war against marriage, which he 
has since continued, amid so much applause, in the 
"Mysteries of Paris," and the " Wandering Jew." 

17* 



214 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

ventionalism. We know as well as you, yea, better 
than you, the greatness of man's destiny, and we 
should blush to find attributed to us, the prejudices 
of those who are governed, not by the precepts of 
the Grospel, but by the opinions of a world condem- 
ned by Jesus Christ, and for which he refused to 
raise his voice in prayer towards his Father. 

Can we be truly accused of encouraging and nour- 
ishing the abuses of worldly vanity ? Have we not 
again and again repeated, that the world is governed 
by the genius of evil ? Did not our Divine Saviour 
himself, so good and so tender, drop these fearful 
words from his sacred lips : "Woe to the world l n 
At the very moment when he was to be bound to the 
cross, when he was pardoning his executioners, he 
refused to pray for the world. His Apostles were 
not less inflexible. St. Paul declared, that if he 
were pleasing to the world, he would cease to con- 
sider himself a servant of Jesus Christ. The 
Apostle of charity, he who during the Last Supper 
had reposed upon the sacred bosom of the Saviour, 
and who had been sprinkled with His blood beneath 
the tree of the cross, often repeated to the Chris- 
tians of the primitive Church : " My little children, 
love not the world."* 



* We only here very superficially touch upon the 
great question of the world. We have treated it 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 2l5 

The world has then its laws and ideas, detested 
and condemned by the Church, and for which she is 
in no way responsible. If in certain circumstances, 
in order to satisfy the demands of selfishness and 
vanity, no qualities of the heart, no upright senti- 
ments, no delicacy of character be required in a 
husband, it is to the world, and not to Christ, that 
we must impute these sad unions, and the open scan- 
dals which, almost always, are their inevitable con- 
sequences. Valentine becomes an adulteress ; but 
have you not yourself confessed, that the Countess 
of Raimbaut, her worthless mother, had an egotisti- 
cal and petrified soul, and a heart, cold and without 
devotion ; in a word, that she was supereminently a 
woman of the world ? Put in the place of this mise- 
rable woman, a Christian mother, a woman who 
makes the study of her children the most pleasura- 
ble occupation of her life ; who regards the happi- 
ness of her daughters as a portion of her own, and 
Valentine would never have married a faithless, 
heartless, and pitiless diplomatist. You may be- 
lieve it, there are many such women even among 
countesses, and if true religion be rare, yet, even 
amid the highest classes of society, Grod has still 

more at length in the "Manual of a Christian Wo- 
man," and in "Woman in her Relations with the 
World." [Works we hope hereafter to translate.] 



216 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

preserved in our beautiful France, many angels of 
virtue, who form the purest and holiest crown of our 
glorious country. 

You may add to all these difficulties that, in the 
eyes of the world, the obligation of marriage is only 
really binding on one of the parties It is true that 
the law exacts from both a fidelity enduring until 
death ; but the culpable tolerance of opinion soon 
frees the husband from such burdensome vows. 
After some years, some months perhaps, he easily 
breaks the fragile tie of conjugal fidelity undisturbed, 
to satisfy the caprices of his heart and imagination. 
But the wife, a captive to opinion, still remains fet- 
tered by eternal bonds. She has still a husband ; 
but that spouse whose outraging infidelity she may 
readily suspect, will never be for her a confidant, a 
consoler, or even a friend. In the midst of the 
dreary solitude of her heart and soul, she will be 
forbidden even to dream a few moments in secret of 
an inconstancy, of which he may be guilty without 
the lightest scruple. 

There is nothing exaggerated in this picture ; we 
might even employ darker shades. But can you 
seriously call upon us to answer, with regard to this 
century, for the morality of the sons of Voltaire ? 
It is not we who have brought up this youth, "the 
worst youth that France has seen for fifty years," to 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 2l7 

use the well known expression of a great writer. — 
(De Cormenin, Feu! Feu! p. 15.) This spirited 
author draws a portrait of our youth, which con- 
trasts strikingly with what he says of the virtues of 
Christian women : " If you have any desire to know 
what they have learned in the way of morals and 
religion, have the kindness to question the students 
themselves, as they are descending the steps of the 
Sarbonne, with their bachelor's diploma under their 
arms, and you will see what they will answer : 

u Mr. Bachelor, to whom I make my bow, what 
know you of religion ? — Nothing. 

" Do you occasionally go to church ? — Never. 

"What are your deeds of charity ? — None. 

"What do you in the morning ? — I smoke. 

"And in the evening ? — I polke. 

" Yery good. .You see how candidly I am answer- 
ed by the newly received Bachelors." They make 
a mockery, you say, of the most sacred oaths ? 
But, to keep an oath, one must believe in Glod ! 
They have, say you again, abused your simplicity 
by fair promises in happier days ? Had you not 
been taught that, without religion, there can be 
neither solid integrity, nor certain promises ? You 
have feared, perhaps, the tedium of a too serious 
husband, permit me the expression, the inconve- 
niences of a too Christian marriage ! But now you 



218 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

experience only the consequences of your own sys- 
tem ! You need not fear that your husband will 
ever fatigue you by his constancy ! You will never 
be called upon to suffer from the severity of his 
virtue ! * 

In the Church, all is otherwise ordered ; Catho- 
licity exacts from the husband a fidelity as strict and 
severe as he demands from his wife. The Catholic 
doctrine is inflexible on this point , it has never 
taxed with exaggeration, but, on the contrary, has 
applauded, these words of one of the most eloquent 
doctors of the first ages of Christianity : " The laws 
of the Gentiles," says St. John Chrysostom, " or- 
dain the most severe penalties against the woman 
guilty of adultery, but threaten none against the 
faithless husband. But I would cite to you the law 
of God, which condemns both equally. St. Paul 
not only says, ' Let every woman have her own hus- 
band ;' but he adds, ' Let the husband render the 



* M. de Balzac, in " The Virtuous Woman," has at- 
tempted to describe with detailed malignity, all the in- 
conveniences of a Catholic marriage. His virtuous 
woman is a native of Bayeux, somewhat silly, tolerably 
ridiculous, and entirely without tact, who makes her 
husband detest morality, Catholicity, and Bayeux. All 
thos.e who have known Christian women, (M. de Bal- 
zac perhaps never having had that happiness,) are 
aware, that, even in lower Normandy, they bear but a 
slight resemblance to Madame de Granville. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER 219 

debt to his wife.' Is this a question of purely exte- 
rior duties ? No ; the duty of which he speaks, is 
that of continence and chastity ; it is reciprocal. 
There is neither privilege nor dispensation for the 
man ; equally guilty, he is equally to be punished. 
What ! your wife has left her father, her mother, 
and her whole family, to be united to you ; and she 
is to become the victim of your brutality, to have 
before her eyes the insolent triumph of a rival, and 
to be a prey to endless strife ? She gave herself to 
you on the condition of becoming your companion, 
free and honored, and not your slave. The law does 
not permit you to alienate her dowry ; and will you 
be permitted to steal from her what is of so much 
more value to her than her whole portion, her hus- 
band, his heart and his person ! You belong to her, 
your chastity and modesty are her property which 
you can never alienate. If you fail in the duty of 
chastity, you must render a strict account to Grod 
who instituted marriage, and who has only given you 
your wife in trust."* 

f St. John Chrysostom, " In illud propter fornica- 
tiones uxorum," No. 4. 



CHAPTER IX. 



MARRIAGE AND LIBERTY. 



Woman walks by man's side, like weakness supported by strength.— 
{Mgr. Giraud.) 



If we are not responsible for the abuses introdu- 
ced into marriage by rationalistic habits and ideas, 
it is but just to require from us a refutation of the 
objections which are made to the institution itself, 
by those who accept, with its ultimate consequences, 
the sentimental theory which it is the aim of this 
work to combat. The fairness which we desire to 
preserve, obliges us to make this confession lo our 
readers : we have, until now, solved only the lighter 
difficulties of this great problem. We are not of 
those who would sustain truth by petty tricks, or by . 
ingenious stratagems. The morality of the Gospel 
appears to us so perfectly beautiful and invulnera- 
ble, that we have full confidence in our power of 
defending it against the most formidable adversaries. 

We shall meet again on this ground, the powerful 
antagonist with whom we have so often entered the 
lists. In Indiana and in Valentine, as we have 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 221 

already remarked, the eloquent author had only 
given utterance to the cries of the victims ; she had 
given an energetic tongue to the profound melan- 
choly of the poor souls sacrificed to the mean and 
petty passions which, almost without restraint, go- 
vern modern society. The great success of these 
first two works, filled the author with audacity and 
hope. Her first accents were only a timid protest, 
and were partly stifled by a remnant of Catholic 
modesty. But in Jacques, the case is altered ; the 
skilful imitator of Rousseau has already surpassed 
her master. The philosophy of the Confessions is 
so far developed, and has grown so bold, that it 
offers to establish the family on an entirely new 
basis. Consuelo, by consecrating the imprescripti- 
ble rights of the heart and of love, shatters the 
whole system of the old society in order to replace 
it by the triple law of pleasure, fraternity, and 
liberty ! 

Does any one imagine that these ideas excite 
around us the just reprobation with which they 
should be stricken ? Did not the pays legal, which 
seemed to mistrust the views of G-eorge Sand, per- 
mit the same paradoxes to pass, without any serious 
protest, in the pages of the Constitutionnel ? Bid 
not Adrienne de Cardoville, popularised by the 
Wandering Jeiv, reiterate all the objections of the 

18 



222 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

author of Jacques against the profoundly social in- 
stitution of Catholic marriage ? Have not these 
truly specious difficulties left a vague and ill-defined 
agitation in a great number of minds ? Do they 
not endeavor to make Christian women believe that 
the protection accorded by the Church, is only a 
hypocritical patronage, and that she conspires with 
their oppressors to rivet, in the name of conscience, 
those fetters, which so cruelly wound so many souls ? 
It is essential to remark, in the beginning of this 
discussion, that we have never represented marriage 
as a state destined to confer upon woman an abso- 
lute independence, an unmixed happiness, or an 
ever-pure and serene tranquillity. Have we ever 
said that the wife and mother is to endure no suf- 
fering ? If some unreflecting writers, in pious ro- 
mances, have shown women Catholic marriage as a 
foretaste of the joys of Paradise, can we be made 
responsible for these puerile eccentricities, if they 
are positively discountenanced by those great theo- 
logians, who join to the knowledge of our doctrines, 
a profound insight into human nature ? The true 
interpreters of the Gospel never present thus to the 
imagination, the deceitful baits of pleasure. But 
as our adversaries will not fail to say, that we sup- 
pose in our doctors ideas favorable to the exigencies 
of our situation, we will let them speak for them- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER 223 

selves : it is not however useless to remark, that as 
hey were much more skilful observers of human 
nature than our modern writers, it has not escaped 
their penetratiDg minds, that the bondage weighs 
almost as heavily on the husband, as on the wife. 

" The bond of marriage," said a great bishop, 
"is indissoluble; it is an eternal servitude. It is 
rightly called a bond, and a chain, not only on ac- 
count of the endless troubles and difficulties caused 
by it, but also, because it subjects the two spouses 
to a reciprocal dependence, the most useful of all. 
St. Paul says, it is true, that the husband has autho- 
rity over his wife ; but this authority does not free 
him from the duty of serving her. They are two 
slaves bound with the same chain, and one cannot 
move without the other." — (St. Chrysostom, In 
Mud propter fomicationes wxorum.) 

u Ask, behold, and listen," energetically exclaims 
Bossuet : " what find you in every family, in even 
the best assorted marriages, if not pain, contradic- 
tions, and anguish ? These are the tribulations of 
which the Apostle speaks ; and he spoke not in vain. 
The world speaks of it yet more than he ; the whole 
of human nature is in a state of suffering. Let us 
say nothing of households filled with scandalous dis- 
sensions ; let us consider the most orderly ; no un- 
happiness is apparent, but to avoid open and real 



224 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

difficulties how much must not the husband and wife 
suffer from each other ? 

" They are both equally reasonable, if you will ; a 
case very rare, and scarcely to be hoped for ; but 
each has his or her humors, habits, prejudices, and 
social connections. Whatever agreement may sub- 
sist between them, their natures are always suffi- 
ciently opposed to cause a frequent contrariety in so 
long and intimate an association : they see each other 
so familiarly, so often, with so many mutual defects, 
without disguise, and in the most unexpected cir- 
cumstances, when there has been an impossibility of 
preparation ; they become weary, the taste palls, 
imperfection repels, and their humanity makes itself 
more and more felt ; both must continually strive to 
overcome their own natures, and must hide the 
amount of their struggles ; by turns they seek to 
effect changes in each other, and must perceive 
their reciprocal repugnance. Complaisance dimin- 
ishes, the heart grows dry ; they become a mutual 
cross ; they may perhaps love their cross ; but it is 
not the less, a cross to be borne. Often, duty is the 
only bond which holds them together, or perhaps, a 
cold esteem, or a spiritless and languid friendship, 
which is only aroused upon extraordinary occasions. 
Daily intercourse has lost nearly all its sweetness ; 
the heart finds but little comfort in it ; it is rather 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 225 

a community of interest, a bond of honor, a faithful 
connection, than a cordial and sensitive friendship. 
Let us even suppose this vivid affection ; what can 
it do ? Where will it end ? It causes in the two 
troubles, sensibilities, and alarms. Even they can- 
not escape sorrow, for one will finally be almost in- 
consolable at the death of the other ; so that, there 
are in human life no more grievous sufferings, than 
those caused by the best marriage in the world." — 
(Bossuet, Sermon on the Obligations of t/ie Reli- 
gious State.) 

Bourdaloue, who joined to so much experience, 
such profound knowledge of evangelical doctrines, 
does not employ less sombre colors in painting the 
servitude of marriage : 

" I have said, and I repeat : the fact that mar- 
riage is a sacrament, is the cause of its excellence, 
and its most noble prerogative in the law of grace ; 
but it is at the same time the reason of its servitude; 
and why ? Because it is its sacramental quality 
which renders it indissoluble, and consequently a 
yoke, and a subjection, like to a state of slavery, 
wherein man renounces his liberty. Now this, 
Christians, is what I call a true bondage, and so it 
is in fact. For, I ask you : is not a condition which 
subjects you, you scarcely know to whom, and which 
you have no power to change, in some considerable 

18* 



226 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

degree the condition of a slave ? Now, marriage 
does all this. It subjects you to another than your- 
self, and this is the essential point ; to another, who 
had no power over you, hut on whom you are now 
dependent, and who has acquired an inalienable 
right over your person. By the priesthood I am 
only bound to Grod and to myself: to God, my sove- 
reign Master, to whom I already owed obedience ; 
to myself, who should naturally be my own guide 
and ruler. But by marriage, you transfer the power 
you have over yourself, to another. 

"Although association, considered in itself, has 
always been regarded as a good, yet by reason of 
the extreme difficulty of finding minds which har- 
monise and mutually suit each other, we may say 
that, ordinarily, solitude is preferable. We can 
scarcely suffer ourselves ; will another be more easy 
to bear with ? I do not speak of the thousand vex- 
ing affairs which the association and community of 
marriage bring. These are only the accidents of 
your condition, but they are so universal, that even 
the marriages of kings and princes are not exempt 
from them. I will only allude to the diversity of 
character which is often found between a husband 
and a wife. What a cross and trial! What an 
occasion for mortification and patience ! A sensible 
and modest husband, with a volatile and dissipated 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 227 

wife ; a well regulated and virtuous wife, with a 
libertine and impious husband. Of the many mar- 
riages, every day contracted, how many are there 
wherein sympathy of heart can be found ? ^And if 
there be antipathy, can a more cruel mart^Rom be 
imagined ?" — (Bourdaloue, Dominicale, Sermon 
on the Marriage State.) 

We are, then, far from concealing all the difficul- 
ties and contrarieties which weigh upon the married 
pair. We are too well acquainted with human na- 
ture, to be liable to deception on this point. The 
adversaries of the institution which we would defend, 
have scarcely said anything; stronger than the pro- 
found theologians we have just quoted. We think 
it not difficult to prove to them, that the Church, 
while exactiDg inviolable vows from women, does 
not attempt to impose upon their credulity, or to 
mislead their weakness. The Catholic priesthood, 
in the functions of its sacred ministry, does not con- 
ceal from the children of the Church, the heavy re- 
sponsibilities which the solemn and sacred bonds of 
marriage impose upon them. 

But, our adversaries will answer, your concessions 
are too limited. You are satisfied with allowing 
that marriage is a heavy yoke for women, and a life 
of constant sacrifice and self-devotion. What you 
will not concede is, that it is an impossible, absurd, 
and tyrannical relation. 



228 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Is it really so ? Is it true that Catholic marriage 
cannot he exculpated from the odious objections 
which have been urged against it ? Is it true that 
woman^is given up without security, protection, or 
defenclf to the caprices of a brutal and arbitrary 
will ? Such is certainly not the doctrine professed 
by Catholic theologians. 

"The Gospel has proclaimed the liberty of wo- 
man, and the dignity of the wife," as has been well 
said by M. l'abbe Bautain ; "for it teaches that 
woman, with regard to man ; the wife, with regard 
to the husband, is a free being, a soul created and 
redeemed by God, and consequently, in intimate and 
personal relation with God. She is responsible for 
herself in all that concerns her salvation : she has 
an inner sanctuary, wherein no one but God has a 
right to enter ; and if she passes into the state of 
marriage, she is only temporally united to man ; she 
does not give her soul, which is the property of God ; 
she surrenders neither her conscience, nor her faith ; 
she concedes certain rights over her existence in this 
world, as well as receives others in return, but there 
is that which remains beyond the contract ; all that 
which concerns the soul and eternity. This it is 
which constitutes the dignity and greatness of Chris- 
tian woman. She gives herself freely, but never 
unreservedly; this reservation maintains the right 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 229 

of G-od over her, guarantees the accomplishment of 
her chief duty ; and in the accomplishment of this 
duty, consists her power in this world, and her sal- 
vation in the next." — (Bautain, Conferences de 
Notre-Dame.) 

Let no one imagine that this doctrine has been 
invented to satisfy the liberal ideas of the present 
age. The Fathers are still more positive and expli- 
cit. Listen : 

"Do not confound submission with slavery," says ' 
St. John Chrysostom. " The woman obeys, but 
remains free; she is equal in honor. It is true that 
she is subject to her husband; and this is her 
punishment for having rendered herself guilty in 
the beginning. Mark it well : woman was not con- 
demned to subjection at the time of her creation ; 
when G-od made and presented her to her husband, 
He said nothing of domination ; we hear nothing 
from the lips of Adam which supposes it. It was 
only after having violated her duty by leading him 
astray to whom she had been given as a support, 
that she heard these words : l Thy desire shall be to 
thy husband P " 

The eloquent doctor goes still further ; he com- 
pares the obedience of the wife to the husband, to 
that which Jesus Christ rendered his Father, while 
he was laboring for the redemption of the world, 



230 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

"If St. Paul," says he, " had intended to recom- 
mend an absolute dependence in the example which 
he adduces, he would not have spoken of the wife 
as owing submission to her husband, but as subjected 
to him, as the slave is to the will of his master. 
Jesus Christ likewise obeyed his Father."* 

The Church is not content with exacting from the 
husband that he respect the freedom of his wife : 

* St. Chrysostom, " Homilia XXVI, in primam ad 
Corinthios." The eloquent Bishop of Constantinople, 
foreseeing the objections which might be made to the 
obedience of wives to their husbands, tries to exhibit 
the whole greatness and sublimity of an obedience 
which is really rendered, not to a man, but to God ; 
and he clearly proves how the tribulations attached to 
that obedience, ennoble and elevate the character of 
the Christian woman : "Wives, if in the eyes of God 
you are subject to your husbands, do not object to me 
that they should do that which they do not ; do not 
trouble yourselves beyond what is ordained by the law- 
giver. What God desires of you is obedience to His 
law, whatever difficulties you may meet with : and 
herein consists the perfection of that obedience which 
you owe Him. To love one who loves you, is no great 
sacrifice, but to heap your cares upon one by whom you 
are not loved, is an effort of virtue, to which God has 
promised His reward. Learn then, Christian women, 
that you are not to wait for your husbands to be virtu- 
ous to become so yourselves. What would there be so 
wonderful in that ? Each should begin by setting the 
example. If we are told to turn our cheek to the 
stranger who strikes us, how much more is not the wife 
bound to bear with the aberracions of her husband !" — 
(St. Chrysostom, lb.) 



THE TOUCHSTONE OP CHARACTER. 231 

she likewise requires, that he should have for her so 
strong, enduring, and disinterested an affection, that, 
finding no object for comparison in human things, 
she is forced to select, as the sublime type of this 
devotion, the love of Christ himself: "Husbands," 
says the Apostle of the Gentiles, " love your wives, 
as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered him- 
self up for it : that he might sanctify it, and present 
itHo himself a glorious Church, not having spot or 
wrinkle, nor any such thing; but that it should be 
holy and without blemish." 

Developing this magnificent doctrine, St. Paul 
adds : 

" So also ought men to love their wives as their 
own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 
For no man ever hateth his own flesh : but nourish- 
eth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the Church 
Because we are members of his body, of his flesh, 
and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave 
his father and mother : and shall cleave to his wife, 
and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great 
sacrament : but I speak in Christ and in the 
Church." — (St. Paul, Ephesians, v, 22, 27 and 
28-33.) 

But let us penetrate into the very heart of the 
difficulty proposed to our consideration. There are, 
it is said, women, who by the delicacy of their mo- 



232 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

ral organisation, will never bear the dependence of 
which we speak, let it be ever so mild. The light- 
est bonds seem to certain souls an overwhelming 
burden- Woman's nature, in some exceptional 
cases, rises to such a height of intellect and sensi- 
tiveness, that it ceases to be capable of accepting 
that subordination which constitutes the essence of 
Catholic marriage. Think you there are not also 
women athirst for the ideal ; who are crushed by fhe 
common-place of ordinary affections ; who would go 
beyond that narrow circle of iron traced round them 
by domestic cares ? G-ive to such natures as good, 
kind, and conscientious a husband as you will, do 
you think he can ever satisfy the ardent longings of 
their mind and heart ? Do you think they can find 
in the family, the realisation of the brilliant dream 
caressed by them from the earliest years of infancy ? 
Do you not believe that they will constantly feel 
cruel disappointments, infinite tortures, and the 
deepest anguish ? If marriage suits certain hum- 
ble, gentle, and patient women, it certainly does 
not accord with those exceptional organisations, filled 
with movement and passion, with those intelligences 
of fire which, by their activity, would inflame the 
whole of nature ! 

What constitutes the grandeur of the Catholic 
doctrine is, that it harmonises with all the moral 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 233 

requirements and exigencies, of superior minds. 
The Church is not like paganism, which imprisons 
all hearts within the same inflexible circle ; she 
knows of a vocation, higher than that of the family ; 
of a destiny, more sublime than that of a mother ; 
and of a happiness, more ideal than that of the do- 
mestic fireside. She so fully avows that all women 
were not intended for the subjection of marriage, 
that, from St. Paul,* down to the Council of 



* The words of the Heaven-inspired Apostle merit 
the most serious attention. They are, besides, only a 
commentary on the doctrine of his Divine Master. — 
Mathew, xix, 11, 12. " I would," says St. Paul to 
his brethren, "that all men were even as myself (that 
is to say unmarried) ; but every one hath his proper 
gift from God; one after this manner, and another after 
that. But I say to the unmarried : it is good for them 
if they so continue, even as T ... I think therefore that 
this is good for the present necessity, that it is good for 
a man so to be. Art thou bound to a wife ] seek not 
to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife % seek not a 
wife." And the same with regard to women. "He 
that giveth his virgin in marriage, doth well : and he 
that giveth her not, doth better. A woman is bound 
by the law as long as her husband liveth : but if her 
husband die, she is at liberty : let her marry to whom 
she will : only in the Lord. But more blessed shall she 
be, if she so remain, according to my counsel : and I 
think that I also have the Spirit of God.'' — St. Paul, 
1st Corinthians, vii, 7, 8, 26, 27, 38, 39, 40. 



18 



284 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Trent,| she has ever recommended celibacy to all 
souls which were not made for the confined atmos- 
phere of common life. "We can no longer be sur- 
prised that the greatest saints found in the hearts 
of women a sympathetic echo to their noblest pro- 
jects. Some heroic virgins have played so wonder- 
ful a part, that they have occasionally eclipsed by 
the sublimity of their devotion, and the power of 
their intellect, the renown of the most illustrious 
men. A St. Catherine of Sienna was the light of 
doctors, the ambassadress of nations, the counsellor 
of Popes, and the admiration of her age J A St. 
Rose of Viterbo, a charming and graceful child, 
became the intrepid buckler of the Papacy against 
the pretensions of the Gliibelline ( mperors. A St. 
Clara, by her ardent love for the poor and the Cross, 
was worthy of aiding the Seraph of Assisi in his 



f The following definition was given by the Church 
in the holy Council of Trent : " If any one say that it 
is better or more blessed, to be united in matrimony, than 
to remain in a state of celibacy ; let him be anathema !" 
The Council merely repeated the doctrine of the Fa- 
thers, whose profound philosophy on this point, merits 
the most serious attention from reflecting minds. 

X See "Legende de Sainte Catherine," Florence 
1477 ; Jean Pius, " Vie de Sainte Catherine ;" Jean de 
Rechac, " Vie de Sainte Catherine ;" Chavin de Malan, 
; - Sainte Catherine de Sienne." 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER 235 

admirable reform. § A St. Theresa astonished the 
world by the grandeur of her character in the age 
of the Loyolas, the Xaviers, and the Francis Bor- 
gias.|| Do not then reproach us with having forced 
a destiny of mediocricy upon women. We have 
likewise liberty for them ;^[ but they can only ac- 
quire it through devotion and self-sacrifice You 
say, that it is a slavery to belong to men; the 
Church does not forbid you to devote yourself to 
Grod. If you will belong neither to God nor to 



\ Chavin de Malan, "Histoire de Saint Francois 
d' Assise." 

|| St. Theresa, her Life (written by herself). Ville- 
fore, " Vie de Sainte Therese." 

\ The question of virginity has profound analogies 
with that of Christian purity ; but we cannot treat it 
here, on account of its vast extent. We may perhaps, 
at some future time, return to it. We will content 
ourselves, for the present, with quoting these noble 
words from Bossuet, which strengthen all we have said 
of the close relations between virginity and liberty. 
" You have heard the Apostle who says : ' I would have 
you to be without solicitude.' And again : l They who 
enter into the bonds of marriage shall have tribulation 
of the flesh.' You see that chastity is no severe and 
heavy yoke, no painful and rigorous state ; it is, on the 
contrary, a peaceful and sweet exemption from the 
gnawing cares and bitter tribulations which afflict men 
in marriage. Marriage is holy, honorable, and with- 
out stain, according to the doctrine of the Apostle ; but 



236 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

men, if you desire neither freedom nor marriage, 
will you dare to ask for license ? 

What do I say ? Have you not already dared to 
ask for license, in the name of oppressed woman, 
as one of her imprescriptible rights ? This is the 
Bad remedy you have found for the evils of matri- 
mony ! This is the shameful means by which you 
would regenerate the laws of love and marriage ! 
And here shines forth the superiority of Catholic 
morality. Try then to throw it aside without falling 
into anarchy ! Endeavor to find, out of the institu- 
lions sanctioned by it, something which is neither 
confusion nor license. If you will have neither pa- 
gan servitude y virginal celibacy, nor Christian mar- 



aocording to the same Apostle, there is another path 
more pure and more peaceful, that of holy virginity. 
] t is permitted to seek a remedy for the infirmity of the 
flesh ; but happy is he who has no need of so doing, 
and who can conquer it ! For it is the cause of many 
pangs to him who can only partially overcome it. O, 
holy virginity, happy the chaste doves who fly on the 
wings of divine love, to seek their delights in the de- 
sert ! O chosen and well beloved souls, to whom it is 
given to live independent of the flesh ! They have a 
Spouse who can never die, in whom they will never see 
the shadow of an imperfection, who loves them, and 
renders them blessed through his love. They have no- 
thing to fear, except not to love him enough, or to love 
that which he does not love." — Bossuet, " Sermon on 
xhe Obligations of the Religious State." 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 237 

riage, nothing remains to you but licentiousness, 
which your poetical imagination may crown as you 
might a miserable beggar with flowers and garlands, 
but whose shameful nudity you can never conceal. 
You do not perceive, that under the pretext of pro- 
gress and liberty, you propose to Christian woman, 
to abdicate her dignity as a wife and mother, and to 
reassume the degraded position of the Lamias and 
Phrynes, from which the purity inculcated by the 
Gospel, seemed to have forever rescued her. Now, 
if the woman, baptised in the Church, and regene- 
rated by the blood of the Saviour, can listen to such 
perfidious counsels, she will never find any other 
liberty than that of the Greek courtesan, to replace 
the glorious self-devotion, and the holy mission, im- 
posed upon her by Catholicity. 

Besides, let not this be forgotten : the indepen- 
dence arising from the indulgence of the passions, 
is merely a rapid descent, which soon leads to the 
most shameful slavery. We have already said, that 
God will never permit so precious and holy a bles- 
sing as liberty, to issue from the miry slough of 
licentiousness Ask experience : is there anything 
less independent than the free woman? George 
Sand herself was aware of this truth, which throws 
so clear a light upon the present question. What 
is, in fact, the life of Juliette in Leone Leoni ? Ju- 

18* 



288 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

liette is not married, she is not like Indiana, Valen- 
tine, or Mathilde, bowed beneath the yoke of Cath- 
olic prejudices and institutions. And yet, see how 
free and happy is that poor Juliette ! She is car- 
ried off, dishonored, betrayed, abandon*, d, and finally 
sold, by that infamous Leone ; indeed, I do not 
know a single husband portrayed by our modern 
literature, — which however is not very flattering to 
them, — that can be compared with that odious lover. 
Bo you really believe that license improves the cha- 
racter of men ? Do you imagine that, if in the 
marriage state they are selfish, avaricious, and sen- 
sual ; the contempt for you with which your dishonor 
will inspire them will render them models of devo- 
tion and self-abnegation ? The Church has failed 
in obliging them to love you, and will philosophy 
render them docile to your lightest caprice, gentle 
as lambs, pure as angels, and faithful unto death ? 
The admirable good sense of Christian women, 
which, during the last fifty years, has preserved mo- 
rality and faith among us, will never be imposed 
upon by such Utopian ideas. Not through such 
dreams will you build that new city which sensual- 
ity, anl not sacrifice, is to govern. Women will 
continue attached to that doctrine of self-devotion 
which has been until now, the cause of their power 
and greatness. They are fully aware of their sub- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 239 

jection, and of the weight of their duties, but they 
would blush to be delicate members under a head 
crowned with thorns. It is true that they must, 
more than once during their lives, weep bitter tears ; 
but they know that the waters of affliction, like 
those of the sea, lose all their bitterness by rising 
towards Heaven. 



CHAPTER X. 



MARRIAGE AND LOVE. 



The philosophers haye deceived themselves, and through their 
desire of destroying the enthusiasm of self-devotion. represented 
by the sublime image of the crucified, have suffered shipwreck ; 
the Crucified remains erect! — (George Sand.) 



Having reached its ultimate consequences, the 
philosophy of the sentimental school passes into 
anarchy, and is lost in the abyss.* 



* Under the head of the sentimental school, we have 
comprised several writers whose opinions differ on many 
points. The greater number have not carried their 
principles to their logical consequences. Some have 



240 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

It is not content with calling the subordination of 
woman required by marriage an odious slavery, and 
a wretched and abject condition, but it attacks the 
very foundation of the institution, and the bond 
which consolidates it. 

Love, say they, is the law of the world. By its 
hidden, mysterious, and divine power, do souls re- 
cognise each other, and are mutually attracted. It 
is love which gives to the moral universe movement, 
light, and life. Without its powerful and regula- 
ting influence, the world of spirit would soon return 
to chaos. But Providence has stamped upon ail its 
laws a character of inviolability and sanctity, and 
wills that all creatures should respect them as an 
expression of His sovereign power, whence, no one 
should attempt, under pain of sacrilege, to fetter 
the good pleasure of the Creator, by arbitrary and 



even fluctuated uncertain, between the morality of 
duty, and the theory of pleasure. The moral system 
of Rousseau, for example, is not the same in " Emile," 
that it is in the " Confessions ;' very far from it In 
our opinion, the true logician of this school is George 
Sand. That vigorous mind has drawn their full conse- 
quences from the opinions of the sentimental school, 
and no one can accuse her of having exaggerated the 
principles laid down before her. More timid spirits 
have been arrested half way, and have shrunk back 
before the abyss, which has failed to intimidate the 
author of " Indiana." 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 241 

impotent conventionalities. Now> this is precisely 
the objection which may be made to the moral sys- 
tem of the Gospel : it has misunderstood the funda- 
mental, essential, and Providential characteristics 
of love, — inconstancy and liberty. It has attempted 
to enchain by eternal bonds the wonderful activity 
of woman's heart. With its icy breath, it would 
congeal into immobility and death, those affections 
which originate from God himself, and over which 
social institutions, be they ever so venerable, can 
only possess chimerical, or rather, criminal rights. 
It is true that women offer every day before the 
altars of Jesus, vows which some would render eter- 
nal ; but God, more powerful than all conventions, 
soon looses with His sacred hands, the tyrannical 
bonds wherewith they would fetter the conscience. 
As the activity of universal life soon buries under 
a luxuriant vegetation the ancient palaces of ruined 
cities, so does human nature, by a slow and secret, 
but unceasing force, efface, day by day, in living 
and energetic minds, the old traces of Catholic 
habits and prejudices. 

That we may not be accused of having exaggera- 
ted the opinions of George Sand, we will quote her 
own expressions. Jacques writes to Fernande, his 
betrothed, some time before his marriage : " Society 
will dictate to you the formula of an oath ; you are 



242 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

about to swear to be faithful and obedient to me, 
that is to say, never to love any other than myself, 
and to obey me in everything. One of these vows 
is an absurdity, and the other is a meanness. You 
cannot answer for your heart, even were I the great- 
est and most perfect of men ; you ought not to 
promise to obey me, because that would be degra- 
ding to us both. So, my child, pronounce confi- 
dently the sacred words, without which, your mother 
and the world would forbid you to be mine ; I too 
will repeat the phrases dictated to me by the priest 
and the magistrate, because it is at this price alone, 
that I can be permitted to consecrate my life to you. 
But to the oath of protecting you, prescribed me by 
the law ... I will add another . . . that of respect- 
ing you . . . Remember Fernande, that when thou 
findest my heart too old to be thy lover, thou mayest 
invoke my grey hairs, and claim from me the tender- 
ness of a father ; if thou fearest the authority of an 
old man, I will endeavor to be thy brother ; if I fail 
in fulfilling any of these roles ... I will depart, and 
will leave thee mistress of thy actions ; never shalt 
thou hear a complaint from my lips." At another 
time, Jacques writes to Sylvia, his confidante : M I 
have not changed my views ; I am not reconciled to 
society, and marriage is still, in my opinion, one of 
the most odious of institutions. I do not doubt that 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 243 

it will be abolished, when the human race shall have 
made some progress towards justice and reason. A 
bond more human, and not less sacred, will replace it, 
and some way will be found of providing for the ex- 
istence of the children, which shall be born of a man 
and a woman, without enchaining for life, the liberty 
of both . . ., etc." — " Nevertheless, there is but one 
thing in life, and that is love." — (George Sand, 
Jacques.) In Consuelo, the idea of the self-sacrifice 
and devotion of the wife, is positively condemned 
as immoral. The sibyl, the prophetess of the fu- 
ture society, speaks thus to a woman who announces 
her intention of remaining faithful to her husband : 
" The Order will inaugurate and sanctify love, lost 
and profaned in the world, the free choice of the 
heart, the holy and voluntary union of two beings 
equally enamored. We have over our children, the 
right of guiding their consciences, of forgiving their 
faults, of assorting their sympathies, and of break- 
ing the chains of the ancient society. Thou hast 
not then that of disposing of thy being as a sacrifice ; 
thou canst not stifle the love within thy bosom, . . . 
without our authorisation." Finally, to dissipate 
all scruples, the sibyl makes an appeal to the autho- 
rity of God himself, and brands with the names of 
slavery and prostitution, all unions which are not 
governed by the law of love : " Wo to the children 



244 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

born of such unions ! they bear the mark of disobe- 
dience . . . Be then sure that God, far from command- 
ing such sacrifices to thy sex, rejects and forbids the 
right of making them. TJiis suicide is as culpable as 
the renunciation of life, and still more base. The 
vow of virginity is anti-human and anti-social ; but 
abnegation without love, is something monstrous in this 
sense . . . Vanity and avarice make of the greater 
number of marriages, a legal prostitution, according 
to the expression of the ancient Lollards." — 
(George Band, CoJisuelo.) We find the same re- 
peated in M. Eugene Sue's most popular work, with 
the exception of the vigor and precision of the style : 
"Who, says Adrienne de Cardoville, who can ever 
answer for the feelings of a whole life ? A God — 
capable of knowing the futurity of hearts, could 
alone irrevocably bind certain beings — for their own 
happiness ; but alas ! to human eyes the future is 
impenetrable : so that when we cannot certainly 
answer for the sincerity of an existing feeling, is 
it not an insane, egotistical, and impious deed, to as- 
sume indissoluble bonds ?" Further on, we find 
this singular dilemma : " We should not accept these 
indissoluble bonds ; for if we love each other, where- 
fore any bonds ? If our love should cease, where- 
fore these chains, which then become only a horrible 
tyranny V Finally, Adrienne de Cardoville dwells 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 245 

upon the imprescriptible rights which women should 
oppose to the tyranny of Catholic marriage, and to 
what, with subtle irony, she calls my Aunfs religion, 
the religion of the Mass : " Through respect tor your 
dignity and for mine, my friend, I will never take 
an oath to observe a law made, with a disdainful and 
brutal egotism, by man against woman ; a law which 
seems to deny soul, mind, and heart to woman ; a 
law which she cannot accept, without becoming 
either a slave, or forsworn : a law which, as a 
daughter, deprives her of her Dame ; as a wife, de- 
clares her in a state of incurable imbecility, by impo- 
sing on her a most painful guardianship ; as a mo- 
ther, refuses to her all right and power over her 
children ; and as a human being, subjects and en- 
chains her forever to the good pleasure of another 
human being, her peer and equal, in the eyes of 
God." — (Eugene Sue, Wandering Jew.) Such 
are the objections of this school of writers. 

Far from having concealed the force of the ob- 
jection, we have rather extended and completed it. 
We must now demolish this brilliant edifice, the 
product of imagination and fancy. 

Is the heart of man truly the universal law ? Is 
there no power in the world except that of sympa- 
thy ? Should the rights of feeling exclude all others 
in the eyes of those who legislate for the nations ? 

28 



246 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

Is it reasonable and philosophical, that the develop- 
ments of this magic power of love, should be a per- 
petual revelation of God in the bosom of nature and 
humanity ? We think we have demonstrated from 
history, philosophy, and experience, all the para- 
doxes which this strange theory necessarily enfolds. 
All that now remains for us, is, to make an applica- 
tion of our principles to the institution of Catholic 
marriage. Is the vow made by the bride before the 
altar absurd and null ? Herein lies the whole ques- 
tion. 

It is true, that if woman promised him to whom 
she gives her hand an eternal enthusiasm, a constant 
state of vivid and burning feeling, such as causes 
two souls to vibrate perpetually in unison, nothing 
could guarantee the performance of such a vow. 
But is this the true sense of the oath ? Has it not 
a meaning at once deeper and more reasonable ? Is 
the Church so ignorant as you deem her of the du- 
ration of human affections ? No. The Gospel does 
not require of the woman that she should remain, 
during her whole life, under the influence of a fleet- 
ing passion. She would rather desire that these 
weighty and sacred obligations should be contracted 
with a certain independence of the heart. She 
would prefer that the union were not so much caused 
by the ardor of affection, as by the harmony of cha- 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 247 

racter, habits, and sympathies But I will admit 
for the moment, that marriages should necessarily be 
contracted under the all-powerful influence of a real 
love. Is it essential that this love should last until 
death, to enable the woman to perform her duties 
as a wife and a Christian ? Oh no ! The diversity 
of dispositions, the thousand collisions of common 
life, the opposition of characters, the vivacity of 
some, and the heaviness of others, the phlegm of 
this one, and the impatience of that, will soon have 
stifled the first ardors of a youthful passion. This 
is, so to speak, the universal law. And can many 
households be found, which form an exception to 
this general rule ? 

But that which may last after love, is self-devo- 
tion, and this is, in the eyes of the Church, the 
meaning of that love mutually promised by the hus- 
band and the wife. In her self-devotion woman 
finds those wonderful secrets of strength and pa- 
tience, which are so needful in enabling her to bear, 
even to the grave, the overwhelming burdens of her 
vocation as a wife and mother. We have a much 
better opinion of woman than our adversaries, who 
have never seen her crowned with the magnificent 
halo of sacrifice, with which the Redeemer himself, 
has encircled her noble brow. You fear that neg- 
lect may tire her patience. But is she not the dis- 



248 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

ciple of a God, made man, who drank to the very 
dregs the bitter chalice of humiliation ? You fear 
lest the restraint and sorrows of conjugal life may 
tire her virtue, and exhaust her courage ? But does 
she not know, that the Son of Man had not where 
to lay his head ? You say that she will feel contin- 
ually new affections arising within her heart ; that 
she must constantly overcome the most agreeable 
inclinations, and mark every moment of her severe 
existence with combat and struggle. Does she not 
know that she is a daughter of Calvary, and that 
the Christian must often pluck out the eye which 
rests with pleasure upon evil, and cut off the hand 
which scandalises ? Do you think it is in vain that 
she has placed upon her heart and brow the cross, 
that sublime image of self-devotion ? Daughters of 
pleasure and sensuality, go and ask of your sisters 
the secret of their unceasing sacrifices, and self- 
immolation. You say that their heroism is impos- 
sible while its glory is dazzling your very eyes. You 
call fidelity a dream, while it is daily working in 
your presence, miracles which preserve and invigo- 
rate tottering society ! If you cannot eomprehend 
the light, at least do not deny its benefits ! 

The picture we have just drawn is no fanciful por- 
traiture. Open history, and read. 

A man who, in the first ages, defended the Church. 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 249 

both by learning and by martyrdom, in recapitula- 
ting the history of the Christian wives of the primi- 
tive Church, relates, that a pagan woman converted 
to the Catholic faith, conceived the glorious project 
of withdrawing her husband from the darkness of 
error. She exhausted upon his inflexible heart, all 
the resources of love and devotion. How many 
ardent prayers were poured forth at the feet of the 
Lord to obtain his salvation ! How often did she 
sprinkle him with her tears, to induce him to lead a 
better life, and abandon the worship of demons ! 
But alas ! all was in vain. Blinded by the infamous 
passions of paganism, that man delivered to the 
judge of iniquity, the tutelary arjgel whom God had 
placed near him. And the woman, who had been 
guilty of wis ing to gain a soul to Jesus Christ, was 
despoiled of her property, imprisoned, and tortured 
in a thousand ways. Nothing could subdue her in- 
trepid courage ; and when, in the midst of torments, 
she rendered her spirit into the hands of the Lord, 
her trembling lips murmured a last prayer for the 
monster who had just abandoned her to the execu- 
tioners. — (See St. Justin, II Apology, No. 2.) 

Do you fancy that since those days of heroism 
Christian women have lost the tradition of self- 
sacrifice and devotion ? Do you think that they 

18* 



250 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

are not now, as formerly, ready to suffer all, that 
the glory of God, and the honor of their vows, may 
be respected ? They feel that they are not only 
wives but mothers. They wish to transmit to their 
children a name which may make their pride and 
glory in the society of men. You say that it costs 
them much, that they must a thousand times trample 
upon their hearts, in order to maintain at this height, 
the elevation of their characters. But if sometimes 
the wife be weak, if she tremble in sustaining this 
severe combat, if the anguish penetrate into her 
very soul, the mother is present to strengthen and 
encourage her. Is not the Christian wife aware of 
the heavy burden which rests upon her shoulders ? 
Does she not know that the religion of her whole 
family depends upon her constancy, chastity, and 
courage ? Is she ignorant, that in saving the family, 
she saves society ? How then can she be weak, 
when she feels that she bears within her arms so 
glorious a treasure ? Can she betray her husband, 
when she knows that thereby, she above all betrays 
her children ? Can she violate her vows, when she 
reflects, that her faith will be rendered responsible 
for her fault ? She will stifle in the depths of her 
soul all indiscreet desires, seductive fancies, foolish 
reveries, and vain projects of love. She will live, 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER 251 

no longer for herself, but for her children, for the 
poor, and for her God. To live thus, is it to die ? 
Is it to extinguish the feelings of nature ? Is it to 
trample under foot the most sacred duties ? Oh no ! 
To live thus is to pray, to suffer, and to combat ! 
And to combat, is the destiny of all who are pil- 
grims of eternity, in this world of sorrows. 

Besides, what can you substitute for the Christian 
woman, for self-devotion, and the family ? Is the 
woman of whom you dream, G-eorge Sand, that 
unfortunate, miserable, and ruined Martha, whom 
you have portrayed in one of your romances ? Is 
she free ? Yet, she has an unconquered nature, an 
independent heart, and a proud and passionate soul, 
which acknowledges no law but its own capricious 
will ! Well ! does this poor Martha find in all her 
provisional marriages, even a small portion of peace, 
security, and independence ? No. She becomes, 
as it ever happens, the idle plaything of selfish and 
brutal passions. Is not her simplicity abused, and 
her ingenuousness imposed upon ? Does she not 
pass from hand to hand, always more miserable and 
degraded ? Is it thus that you would raise the dig- 
nity of woman ? Would you thus elevate her in 
public opinion, and place on her brow the crown of 
royalty ? Will a regenerated people bow before so 



252 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

earth-stained an idol ? Is this the meaning you 
attach to liberty, morality, and progress ? * 

The Christian woman does not thus understand 
life, duty, and virtue ? A young girl, at the age of 
fifteen, sacrificed to the interests of her faith, the 
certainty of a brilliant marriage. Once wedded to 
the Baron de Chantal, by her father's will, she re- 
established the fortune of her husband. As a 
widow, she managed with the same dexterity, the 
property of her father, of her father-in law, and of 



* Sometime before the revolution of February- the 
ideas of George Sand seemed to undergo considerable 
modifications. This great writer, after some cruel de- 
ceptions, seemed to comprehend the superiority of the 
law of self-devotion and sacrifice, over that which she 
had so often designated, as the imprescriptible rig/its of 
love. She appeared to understand the enthusiasm of self- 
devotion, represented by the sublime image of the Cruci- 
fied. These are her own words. But we will allow the 
author of " Indiana" to speak for herself. She propo- 
ses to show the sublimity of the heroism of Pius IX. of 
that holy and glorious Pontiff, who. to restore the Pa- 
pacy to its ancient splendor, and to regenerate his na- 
tive Italy, so nobly exposed himself to the greatest dan- 
gers, and the most violent tempests : " How could we 
desire that the Pope should be a mere philosopher ? 
And even could he entertain such an idea, what phi- 
losophy would we have him profess ? What doctrine 
fit for a priest and the Head of the Church, have we 
preached and disseminated throughout the world ? Can 
it be the worship of the reason, which our revolution 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 253 

her children. While absorbed in the education of 
her family, she gave to the poor the entire result of 
her economy, and, with touching humility, nursed 
them in their most disgusting maladies. This wo- 
man, still young and lovely, dressed the wounds of 
the poor, received them in her house, fed them du- 
ring scarcity, and treated them as her own children.* 
By such wonders did she begin life, who was af- 
terwards known as St. Frances de Chantal, and who, 
with the illustrious Bishop of Geneva, founded the 
Order of the Visitation. 



has left us as the only doctrine % But this worship of 
the reason has borne its fruit, and reason has taught us 
selfishness. Individual reason teaches us to keep quiet, 
to let our neighbor be murdered, and only to complain 
when our own purses are attacked. Individual reason 
teaches us, that the reason of the strongest is always 
the best." Further on, George Sand adds : " The phi- 
losophers have believed in a collective reason, which 
might suffice to man for the exercise of his rights, and 
the practice of his duties. They are deceived in think- 
ing that reason can dispense with the ideal, and that 
the interest of each well understood, would be the in- 
terest of all. They have deceived themselves ; and by 
wishing to destroy the enthusiasm of self-devotion, re- 
presented by the sublime image of the Crucified, have 
suffered shipwreck ; the Crucified remains erect !" — 
(George Sand, quoted in "le Correspondant," XXI, 
457.) 

* See " Letters of St. Jane Frances de Chantal.'' 
Marsolier, " Vie de Sainte J. F. de Chantal," 



254 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

When only twenty-eight, a young woman of dis- 
tinguished birth, found her husband an exile ; her 
fortune was compromised and lost, and upon her fell 
the charge of an aged father, and of. six little chil- 
dren. A trial for high treason menaced the life of 
her consort. Madame Acarie was equal to all ; she 
saved her honor and her husband's life ; she repaired 
her fortune, passed her nights at V hotel Duu, and 
at the hospital of St. Gervais, and, during the siege 
of Paris, deprived herself of bread, to feed the poor 
of the most wretched faubourgs. She, whom her 
age called a heroine and a saint, is named by the 
Church, the Blessed Mary of the Incarnation. "f 

Shall I speak of that illustrious Louise de Maril- 
lac who, having, after twelve years of marriage, be- 
come the widow of M. Le Gras, merited the glorious 
title of the servant of the poor ? Before becoming 
the friend of Vincent of Paul, and founding with 
him the Order of the Sisters of Charity, had she 
not been a Christian wife, admirable for her piety 
and chastity ? § Shall I mention Madame de Pol- 



f See Duval, " Vie de la bienheureuse Marie de l'ln- 
carnation." De Montis, " Vie de la B. M. de 1' Incarna- 
tion." 

§ See Collet, " Vie de Saint Vincent de Paul." Cape- 
figue, " Vie de S. V. de Paul." Gobilon and Collet, 
u Vie de Madame Le Gras." ^Louise de Marillac.) 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 255 

lalion, another friend of Vincent of Paul, who insti- 
tuted the Sisters of Providence, and reconducted to 
virtue so many poor, erring souls ? || How could I 
omit Madame Martin, one of the most intellectual 
women ot her day, who went into the frozen depths 
of the Canadian forests, and remained until the age 
of seventy, engaged in the instruction of the Indian 
children ? IF And would not a volume be required 
to relate all the virtues of the celebrated Madame 
de Miramion, whose heart, burning with charity, 
would not permit her to remain unassociated with 
any of the good deeds of her era ? ** 

A cotemporary writer thus recapitulates, in a few 
lines, all the marvels of that truly Christian life : 
" An orphan at the age of fourteen, a widow and a 
mother at sixteen, she devoted herself, under the 
direction of the Abbe du Festel, to every species of 
charitable labor, and consecrated to good works all 



|| See Collin, " Vie de la venerable mere Marie de 
Lumague." Madame de Pollalion's name before her 
marriage, was Mademoiselle de Lumague. 

T[ See " Lettres de Marie de 1' Incarnation." Dom 
Claude Martin, " Vie de Marie de l 1 Incarnation." De 
Charlevoix, "Vie de Marie de l 1 Incarnation." This 
Marie de 1' Incarnation should not be confounded with 
Madame Acarie. Her name before her marriage with 
M. Martin, was Marie Guyert. 

** See De Choisy, " Vie de Madame de Miramion." 



256 THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 

the time not required in the education of her daugh- 
ter. Like Madame Le Grras (Louise de Marillac) 
she nursed the sick in the hospital, went on missions 
into the country, opened asylums, schools, houses of 
retreat, and contributed to the establishment for the 
care of foundlings. Like Madame de Pollalion 
(Mademoiselle de Lumague) she founded a refuge 
for sinful women, that of St. Pelagius. Like the 
Apostle of Canada (Madame Martin) she assisted, 
if not in person, at least with her purse, her efforts, 
and her vigils, in the propagation of foreign mis- 
sions. Like them all, she instituted her commu- 
nity, that of the Holy Family, which she united 
with that of St. Genevieve, and of which she died a 
professed member and Superior. — (Dab as, in the 
Universite Catholique, second series, IV, 468 ) 

How could I neglect to make mention of that ad- 
mirable Duchess of Montmorency, who astounded 
the court of Louis XIII by her virtues, and filled 
France with her alms ; * of the Princess of Conti, 
who, in a few years, gave more than 900,000 francs 
to the poor ; of Madame de Saint-Pol, who kissed 
the ulcers of the sick ; of Madame de la Petterie, 
who, after the death of her husband, hid her life 



* See Cotolendi, ' Vie de la Duchesse de Montmo- 
rency.' 



THE TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER. 257 

among the barbarians of the New World, in order 
to instruct and console their children ; and of Ma- 
dame de Magnelais, who called the vermin left by 
the poor on her rich clothing, her diamonds ? * 

Such is Christian woman formed by fidelity and 
chastity. Now, will you venture to say that Catho- 
lic morality is impossible and absurd, when it has 
produced such miracles, nurtured such noble hearts, 
and developed such elevated characters ? We have 
a right to say, with the author of Valentine: " The 
philosophers have deceived themselves, and through 
their desire of destroying the enthusiasm of self- 
devotion, represented by the sublime image of the 
Crucified, have suffered shipwreck ; the Crucified 
remains erect !" 



(the end. 



* See Picot, 'Essai historique sur linnuence de la 
religion en France pendant le XVII siecle.' Jauffret, 
1 Vie des dames francaises les plus illustres par les ser- 
vices quelles ont rendus a la religion pendant le XVII 
siecle.' Rodiere, ' les Femmes Chretiennes. 1 



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